


Musica Humana

by starandrea



Series: Sky Verse [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-09
Updated: 2010-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 15:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 53,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starandrea/pseuds/starandrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel's past comes due, and Sam stands up beside him.  From Woodstock to werewolves, Star Trek to state fairs, angelic time travel to temporary genderswap, Sam doesn't have much time to think, so he operates on instinct: the instinct that says Gabriel deserves to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musica Humana

**Author's Note:**

> Hover over Latin phrases for an English translation.

_Inspired by the livejournal community, [au_bingo](http://community.livejournal.com/au_bingo/). Custom card [here](http://starandrea.dreamwidth.org/753784.html)._

_Pop culture universes visited or referenced: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Avatar, The New Mutants, My Little Ponies._

_Goddesses in order of appearance or mention: Kali, Aset, Freyja, Iris, Minerva, Seshat, Hecate, Erzulie, Brigid, Inanna._

**Chapters:**

1\. Age of Aquarius  
2\. The One with the Whales  
3\. Stage Show  
4\. Beginning to Look a Lot Like Something  
5\. Ancient History  
6\. Double Lines of Dominance  
7\. I See You  
8\. Back in Time  
9\. Inheritance  
10\. Tribunal (the short version)  
11\. Mutatis Mutandis  
12\. Powers of Observation  
13\. Free  
14\. Like You Were Never Gone  
15\. The Law Won  
16\. Some Kind of Freedom  
17\. Messenger Without a Message  
18\. Bygones  
19\. Coming Back  
20\. Party at the Kids' Table  
21\. So You Know Who You're Getting  
22\. Light and Dark  
23\. Home Fires  
24\. Paradise Estate  
25\. Shake the Glitter off Your Clothes

**   
Age of Aquarius   
**

"Rise and shine, Sammy!"

A song he really didn't like backed up Dean's obnoxious command, and Sam shoved the blanket away in an effort to reach the alarm.  The radio wasn't under his hand – and neither was the edge of the bed.  He felt the whole world tilt as something hard and very un-mattress-like pressed against his shoulder.

"Mmph."  The sound from beside him, wordless though it was, had a distinctly feminine edge.

Sam froze, trying to figure out who he would disturb if he tried to flail away now.  "What?" he managed, only barely stopping himself from adding _the fuck?_ 

"Don't go around tonight," Dean's voice sang, weirdly happy and definitely underwritten by caffeine.  "It's bound to take your life!"

"Okay, stop," Sam insisted, pushing himself up and squinting at something that was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a motel room.  "Why are you singing?"

Dean squeezed past and the floor shook.  There wasn't any room in here, and they definitely weren't alone.  "Because it's a great song," he said, and the words were repeating from the direction he'd come from.  Car stereo.  He sang along with the end of the chorus again: "There's a bad moon on the rise!"

Sam winced.  He was pretty sure he was in the back of a van.  He had no idea why, but Credence Clearwater was giving him the creeps.  "Turn it off."

"Tune in, Sammy," Dean said over his shoulder.  Light filtered in the back as the doors creaked, and yeah, a van.  A parked van, and Sam was sleeping in the back of it along with what looked like a pile of supplies and possibly other people.  Including one that was curling up next to him and trying to ignore them both.

"Don't be the man, Dean."  The voice from up front sounded amused, and Sam was sure he knew it.  The radio station went to static, and a moment later Sam heard, _"Peace will find the planet and hope will steer the stars--"_

"Sarah?" he blurted out.  Sarah had a van.  For moving art.  What the hell were they all doing in it?

"Yeah?" she answered.  "Morning!"

"Are we there," the woman beside Sam muttered, and with no small amount of shock he recognized her as Ruby.

"We're there, we're square, and we're ready to groove!" Jo's chipper voice replied.

Sam heard Dean laugh.  "Jo, that's not how it goes."

"That's how it goes for me," she told him happily.  "Own your own trip!"

"Too early for acid," Ruby murmured, pulling the blanket away from Sam and burrowing her head beneath it.  "Make 'em stop."

"What the fuck," Sam said.  It was long past time he finished that sentence.  "Seriously, someone tell me what's going on."

"We're there!" Dean repeated.  "Told you we had to get here early!  We got a tree!"

"Trees are our friends!" Jo exclaimed.  "I'm going to sleep riiiight up there."

"You're gonna fall," Dean told her.

"I'll fly!" she said with a laugh.  "All I have to do is not hit the ground!"

"Are you stoned?" Sam demanded.  There didn't seem to be anything else to ask.  Except, _have you been possessed,_ or possibly, _did witches do this?_ or maybe, _am _I_ hallucinating?_

"Can't drive when you're tripping!" Dean said cheerfully.  "Come on, Sammy, that would be ir-res-ponsible."

It made Jo giggle, and Sam just stared at them.  He wasn't sure where they were supposed to be right now, but if he had to guess, he thought it was probably the Roadhouse.  That was the last thing he remembered, anyway.  Weren't they all... staying there, or something?

"Leave 'em alone," Ruby mumbled.  "Maybe they'll set up the tents without us."

"We don't need tents," Jo insisted.  "We're going to sleep in the trees!"

This time Dean was the one who laughed, but they were outside the van now and Sam thought one of the front doors was open too.  He felt the thing rock when Sarah climbed back inside, leaning over the seat to grab a pack or something.  It looked like they were surrounded by camping equipment.  Ruby definitely had her head on someone's stuffed up sleeping bag.

"Castiel," Sarah was saying.  "You want to get the water?"

"Cas?" Sam blurted out.  He turned so fast he almost lost his balance trying to get up.  "Cas!" he repeated, catching sight of the angel standing just outside the passenger side door.  "What's going on?"

Castiel tilted his head, and it took Sam a moment to figure out what was wrong.  "We've arrived at Woodstock," he said simply.  "If you'll recall, Dean insisted on leaving immediately after work yesterday afternoon.  It's now Friday morning.  I believe he and Jo will require supervision to assemble the campsite."

No wings.  Castiel wasn't glowing, and Sam felt his heart sink.  He'd always been able to see a little bit of grace leaking through at the edges of Castiel's vessel.  If that was gone, then none of this was right, and he wasn't going to get any answers from their formerly angelic ally.

"Woodstock," he repeated, numb and confused and getting more worried as the shock started to ebb.  "Like, the actual Woodstock?  Hippieville, the 60s, with tie-dye and long hair and free love?"

"I do not believe any of us are wearing tie-dye," Castiel replied.

"Don't expect any free love in this van," Ruby grumbled, dislodging the blanket as she rolled onto her back.  "What's a girl have to do to get some sleep around here, anyway?"

She didn't have any binding sigils on her.  Sam tried to swallow his instinctive panic, because, right.  Not real.  Whatever was going on, this wasn't real.  Ruby was dead – several times over – and the day Dean got caught traveling in an art van was the day... well, probably the same day Jo agreed to go camping with any of them.

"Why are we at Woodstock?" Sam tried again.  It couldn't be time travel, right?  He'd seen the angels do it, but this... this was ridiculous.  They were definitely supposed to be at Ellen's.  With the garrison.  That was right; Dean had a garrison of angels and he'd put Sam and – 

Gabriel.

"Gabriel," he said aloud, just as Castiel answered.

"Dean was determined that we go," he said.  "I understand Credence Clearwater Revival is scheduled to play tomorrow."

"Who the fuck is Gabriel?" Ruby complained.  "Is this your way of making me get up?  You're going to annoy me into consciousness?"

"Gabriel," Sam repeated.  "Come here."

It worked back at the Roadhouse, apparently because he was in charge.  Any angels stationed at the Roadhouse garrison had to report as soon as he summoned them.  He'd even tried it on Gabriel, and it had worked both times.

This time?  Nothing.

Except for Castiel giving him an odd look, and Ruby groaning and pulling the blanket back over her head.  "I hate you all," she said, voice muffled by the blanket.

Somehow, Sam found himself helping to set up the campsite.  Mostly because he didn't know what else to do and Dean and Jo clearly didn't care enough to recognize a ridiculous idea when they had it.  Like trying to put all three tents on top of each other.  Or trying to cut a second and third doorway in the middle tent so they could connect them all.  Sam gave them credit for at least remembering they'd need to get in and out, then took the stakes away from them and made Sarah help instead.

Castiel wandered off at some point, which made Sam nervous until he reminded himself they weren't real.  It wasn't really Cas, alone and inhuman in the midst of a crowd that was – if this was really the music and art festival of 1969 – about to be classified a federal disaster.  Ruby went with him, and Sam gave up trying to figure out whether that was good or bad.

Dean and Jo crashed about the same time there was actually a place for them to do it, and Sarah spread out her sleeping bag in the next tent over and told Sam to wake her up if anything interesting happened.  Sam worried about leaving them alone: high, straight, sleeping or not, but everyone he'd met at the surrounding campsites was freakishly nice.  Not even stoned nice, just... nice.  Happy.  Polite.  Friendly in a way he couldn't remember anyone ever being around him.

_Besides,_ he reminded himself, _they're not real._  Whatever was going on, he wasn't going to figure it out by keeping watch over figments of his imagination.

The woods were full of trails, with signs going up as he walked.  It wasn't exactly like whatever vague notion he'd had of Woodstock, but if this wasn't all in his head then there was must be some kind of reason for it so he tried to pay attention.  He made a mental note about where the food was, where the water was, and how many different ways there were to find shelter from the stage area.

The stage, at least, looked exactly as he'd expected.  Maybe smaller, from a distance, but set onto the open hillside with what had to be tens of thousands of people just... sitting.  There was constant movement around the edges of the crowd.  And speakers.  Speakers on giant platforms, broadcasting nothing.

The music hadn't even started yet, and it already looked like a deathtrap.

"Gabriel," he said again.  "Where the hell are you?"

There was no answer.  He still couldn't remember exactly what had happened before he woke up here, but he was pretty sure it had involved the trickster in some way.  The garrison was clearer in his mind now: Dean was Michael, Cas was... inexplicably god-like, lately, and Gabriel was in trouble.  Sam could remember Sachiel threatening him.  He remembered Jophiel refusing to acknowledge him.  He remembered Anna and Samael siding with them, and he thought Dean had drawn a line that both sides would honor.

He couldn't remember what happened after that.  Which probably wasn't good, but no matter what Cas said, he doubted Gabriel would hurt him.  He might be having some issues with Cas' children, but no one with a shred of loyalty to Michael would come after Sam.  That was one rule even Gabriel wasn't ready to break.

"Sam."

He spun, nothing at his back but strangers – and it was Castiel.  Complete with trenchcoat and wings, and he was _still _wrong.  Sam hadn't seen that trenchcoat since his then-human brother had convinced Cas to ditch it their first night at Ellen's.

"Cas," he said.  Because that was something, at least.  Everything was a little clearer with Cas standing there.  "What the hell is going on?"

"Gabriel is looking for you," Castiel said.  "You need to find him."

"What's he – "

Castiel was gone.  Just like that.  Just like nothing.  Sam didn't see his wings sweep out behind him, didn't see any indication that he'd meant to leave, he was just... gone.  Like something had snatched him away.

Or like he'd never been there in the first place.

Sam went back to the campsite, just in case.  If someone really was looking for him, that was where they'd do it, right?  He wasn't going to be any easier to find in a crowd of imaginary people he _didn't_ know.  The other Cas was back by the time he got there, and Dean was awake, busy naming their campsite "Moonshot" despite the sharp decrease in the amount of giggling going on.

Ruby was still gone.  Sarah was missing now too.  Sam found Jo at the next campsite over, stringing beads or something, and he was about to give up and get some food when everything suddenly got a whole lot weirder.  Yanking open the back of the van, he found the inside filled with a painted green spiral that screamed _death!_  And smack in the middle of it stood Gabriel.

"They're here," he said, reaching out for Sam.  "Come on."

Sam stumbled back but Gabriel was too close and he could fucking fly.  He was right on top of Sam and they were both off balance, crashing backwards, tumbling.  Falling down and down.  There was no ground underneath them at all.

The only thing Sam could feel was Gabriel's fingers, clenched cold and tight on his arm.

**   
The One with the Whales   
**

He was slammed into a chair without warning.  Sam could hear someone yelling about nuclear fission and how they were all going to be radioactive and glowing.  It wasn't reassuring, on the whole, and he tried to shove himself back to his feet only to feel a hand on his shoulder holding him down.

"Strap in," Cas' voice told him.  That tone left no room for argument.

Sam was about to protest anyway when loud footsteps on a metal deck announced Dean's arrival.  "Cas," he snapped as he burst into the little compartment.  "Where the hell's the power you promised me?"

"One damn minute, Commander."  Cas' hand was gone, and Sam blinked.

The nuclear fission voice was saying they were ready, and there was Jo following Dean around like a lost puppy until he shoved her into another seat and told her the same thing Cas had told Sam.  Apparently they were going somewhere, and everyone expected it to be a rough ride.  Which wouldn't have worried Sam so much if he hadn't seen what looked like a _flight plan_ superimposed over the giant picture window in front of him.

_Golden Gate Park,_ he thought.  He was pretty sure he didn't want to be in anything stupid enough to land in the middle of San Francisco.  Especially with Tamara sitting in front of him, muttering, "I'm trying to remember how this thing works.  I got used to a Huey."

Sam could only assume that since no one was telling him what was going on, he was supposed to know.  He was willing to write the Woodstock thing off as a hallucination, but this wasn't the Roadhouse either.  This wasn't anything like the Roadhouse.  This was, unless he was crap at recognizing science fiction, a spaceship.  A spaceship that was trying to make an escape.

Which kind of worked with Gabriel's unexpected urgency, now that he thought about it.  That had been Gabriel, right?  Cas had said it would be, and who else cared enough about the Mystery Spot to manifest it for fun?

The ship took off.

Seriously, Sam thought?  Was it supposed to creak like that?  Also, what the fuck.  He was again stuck in a completely imaginary scenario for _no reason_, and he was going to kick Gabriel's ass the next time he saw him.

Speaking of.

"Hey, Cas," he said, sliding over a little.  It wasn't like anyone else was going to do better.  "Busy?"

"Ellen is busy," Castiel replied.  "I am monitoring."

Sam glanced over his shoulder.  Next to Jo was Ellen, who did indeed look like she was paying attention to something vital.  What it was, Sam had no idea.  If Tamara was in charge of making sure they didn't fall out of the sky, that seemed like the most important thing to him.

"Okay," Sam said, turning back to Cas.  "Tell me what's going on."

"We are attempting to retrieve the two humpack whales, George and Gracie," Castiel said, "so that we may transport them to the 23rd century where they might divert the wrath of the probe currently destroying Earth."

"Uh-huh," Sam agreed.  "Well.  That makes sense."

"Indeed," Cas said.  "The problem I encounter, among others, is that in order to return us to the exact moment we left, I have used our journey back through time as a referent.  Calculating the coefficient of elapsed time in relation to the acceleration curve."

"Naturally," Sam said.  "So what's your problem?"

Castiel frowned.  "Acceleration is no longer a constant."

_Among others,_ he'd said.  Sam wasn't sure he wanted to know.  "Well, you're just going to have to take your best shot," he said, in lieu of asking any more questions.  This Cas didn't have wings, so Sam figured the amount of information he had available was limited.

"Best shot?" Cas repeated.

"Guess, Cas," Sam said.  "Your best guess."

"Guessing is not in my nature," Castiel informed him.

Despite everything – whatever everything was, and Sam still had no idea – it made him smile.  "Well," he offered, because even in  his imagination Cas was exactly the same.  "Nobody's perfect."

Jo was exclaiming over something on the other side of the cabin, and Ellen seemed to agree, calmer though she was.  The window in front turned blue with ocean, and it occurred to Sam to wonder how Dean felt about flying now.  This Dean seemed fine with it, but then, this Dean let Cas call him "Commander."  Not exactly representative.

Apparently Cas hadn't been kidding about the whales, because they snatched a couple of them from out in front of a whaling ship before whatever they were on started to climb in earnest.  Sam _hoped_ it was a spaceship, because they were definitely headed out of the atmosphere.  The sky was turning black, and as far as anyone around him seemed to know, they were heading straight for the sun.

On purpose.

Good to know his friends were equally crazy in any circumstances.

The whole diving into the sun thing was kind of a blur, except that he was pretty sure they started to lose power somewhere in there and they almost didn't make it.  Big surprise.  Sam could only wonder what would happen if he died here.  Wherever here was.  Wherever he was.  If he was somewhere else and just dreaming all of this, maybe dying would wake him up.

He wasn't about to try it if he had any other choice.

"We're through," Dean's voice said in the sudden darkness.  "Condition report."

Castiel replied, "No data, Commander.  Computers are non-functional."

"The mains are down," Isaac reported.  "Aux power is not responding."

"Switch to manual control," Dean said.

Tamara didn't sound freaked out when she told him, "I have no control."

"Where are we?" Sam blurted out.  The blackness was unnerving.

He heard Dean mutter, "Out of control and blind as a bat."  Which really did the opposite of making him feel better.

Then something staticked, communication crackling to life, and at first he thought it was the guy who'd been warning them about nuclear power.  But it was Bobby's voice instead, fierce and strange through the distortion, yelling, "Get them back!"

It could have been his imagination, but he thought he heard _Gabriel_ saying, "Look."

"They're heading for the bridge!"  Bobby sounded horrified, and Sam couldn't blame him because he had a really bad feeling that "they" meant them.  Him and Cas and Dean and everyone else... _they aren't real,_ he reminded himself.  But it _felt_ real, it felt like they were going down, powerless and running on emergency reserves that could go at any second.

The window was really just a window now, no flight plan, not even any magnification on reserves.  He didn't see the bridge until it had already flashed past.  He heard Dean yelling, "Keep the nose up if you can!"  Then everything was shaking, crashing, trying to break itself apart as they splashed down.

"We're in the water!" Dean shouted, like they hadn't figured that out.  "Blow the hatch!"

The other voices were gone again.  Sam guessed they'd lost communications with the rest of the power.  He wasn't at all excited about leaving the ship, not least because he could hear the wind from where he was and the hatch wasn't _flooding_... that was rain pouring in, slanting in the weird half-light.  But everything was still creaking and banging and he was even less excited about staying inside a spaceship as it sank into San Francisco Bay, so he turned to follow Dean.

Who was clapping Cas on the shoulder, telling him to get everyone out.  Cas promised, and then Dean was pushing past him, heading _deeper into the ship._  Sam tried to grab him, to pull him back, but Castiel put both hands on his shoulders and forced him bodily toward the open hatch.

"Go," Cas was saying.  "Out.  Dean will free the whales."

_Of course he will,_ Sam thought, a little wildly.  Dean was all about freeing the whales, and also, _what?_

But Cas was standing behind him, bullying him, forcing him up through the emergency hatch, and Sam reached for the hand that stretched back toward his.  Cold fingers closed around his own.  Someone pulled hard enough that he knew they couldn't be human, and sure enough, there was Gabriel standing on the outside of the half-submerged spaceship.

The green, bulbous, half-submerged spaceship with wings stretching to either side, and it had taken Sam this long to get it but he knew exactly what he would see if he could find the ship's makeshift call letters.  In dripping red paint would be the words _HMS Bounty._  "Is this the one with the whales?" he demanded.

"No, it's the other one with the whales," Gabriel said.  "Of course it's the one with the whales; didn't you see them?  Dean's about to heroically rescue them both from the cargo bay he trapped them in while holding his breath for an implausibly long period of time.  It would be popcorn-worthy if I wasn't in such a hurry."

Gabriel hadn't let go of his hand, and Sam tried to yank it away.  "Tell me what's going on," he said.

"If you weren't already dead," Gabriel said, holding his hand exactly where it was, "I'd think about that for the tenth of a second it deserves before saying no.  But you are, I won't, and we need to go."

Gabriel might be stronger than he was, but Sam wasn't stupid.  He concentrated on the darkness and Gabriel actually yelped, yanking his hand away in a flash of grace.  "If I'm dead," Sam said, "what are we running from?"

"The people who want _me_ dead," Gabriel snapped, shaking his hand back to full form.  "Nice trick.  Bad timing."

Jo was pushing her way through the hatch now.  There was someone behind her, and Sam could hear Cas' voice from the depths.  He reached out to catch Jo's hand automatically.  She steadied herself against him.  They crowded down, making room for everyone to cling on to the side of the ship – Sam really hoped it wasn't going to sink – and when he looked again, Gabriel was gone.

"Gabriel," he said, trying not to panic.  "Gabriel!"

"Sam."

It was Jophiel's voice, not Gabriel's, but he managed not to bang his head against the metal hull at his back.

"Gabriel can take care of himself," she told him.  "Let him go."

"No offense," he told her, because she was Cas' friend and he kind of liked her, "but what the hell."

"Let him – "

She was gone.  Wings and all, just like Cas.  Like Cas last time.  Because this wasn't real, he reminded himself.  They were coming into TV land to try to warn him, or something.  But what was he doing here?

"It's a lot more dangerous than TV land," Gabriel's voice said.  "I can't keep them out forever."

"_You're_ sending them away?"  He should have known.  Once a trickster, always a trickster, right?  Cas had tried to tell him.  "Gabriel, I want out.  This isn't funny."

"It's a little funny," Gabriel said, reaching for him again.  Sam jerked so hard he almost fell, but he could feel Jo's hand holding him hard from behind.  And that had to be Cas, anchoring his other shoulder with an iron grip.  Gabriel was staring past him with an unreadable expression as he concluded, "Sadly, the joke's on me."

Sam couldn't help it.  He glanced back.

It was Jo and Cas all right.  But their eyes were glowing white, and neither of them wore any expression at all.

Sam reached out blindly.  He reached away, not taking his eyes off of the angels.

A cool hand caught his.  He could only hope it was Gabriel's.

"Oh, right," a familiar voice whispered in his ear.  "_Now_ you trust me."

"Trust isn't the word," Sam muttered.

"You said 'tomato,'" Gabriel said.  "I say, 'he who holds hands with an archangel'..."

The grip on his hand was rough and painful and Sam thought his arm would be a casualty of their impromptu tug-of-war.  Then the ship vanished out from under him.  He fell and he kept falling and all he knew was darkness and noise and Gabriel's crushing hold on his hand.

**   
Stage Show   
**

The roar of the crowd came from somewhere beyond blinding lights and the edge of the world, currently defined by the stage.  Sam was surrounded by drums.  He was pretty sure that was bad.  Dean had a microphone, though, and he thought that was probably worse.  Even if he was using it to yell instead of actually sing, Sam figured it couldn't be long.

He stood up.  He was done with this.

"Gabriel!" he shouted.  The name was mostly lost in the chaos, but he was wearing a headset and he could tell everyone on the stage heard him.  At least it wasn't broadcast to the entire stadium.  "Gabriel!  Show yourself, or so help me, I'm carving your name into a wooden stake!"

Like it would matter, but he'd spent a long time planning ways to kill the trickster.  He'd burned that face into his brain along with kill stats and potential weaknesses.  Times like this it still wasn't easy to think of him as Gabriel, the archangel who could only be brought down by another archangel's sword.

The mic had gone dead, but he could hear Dean's voice in his ear yelling for Cas.  Of course.  Because Cas was always on the line, always there in any universe, ready to swoop in the moment Sam faltered.  Ready to take his place at Dean's side.

He was aware he wasn't at his most rational right now, but he thought maybe someone could cut him some slack.

Then Dean was next to him – or not-Dean – whacking him on the back of the head and twisting his headset out of the way as he leaned in close.  "Really, dude?" Dean shouted in his ear, and Sam could almost hear him over the sound of everything.  "What the hell did he give you?"

"Nothing!" Sam shouted back.  Because it was true, not because it was the smartest thing he could have said.  "Where is he?"

"Can you play?" Dean yelled.  "Can you have your little freakout later, or is this a thing now?"

There was only one real answer to that.  "This is a thing," he insisted.  "I need to find Gabriel!"

"Okay, dude, whatever."  Dean yanked his own headset back around and said, "Cas, Sam's messed up on something.  I gotta get him out of here."

"If you're not back in six minutes," Castiel's voice replied, "we're going to intermission."

"Yeah, okay."  Dean was already hauling him up, draping an arm around him like they were off on some other crazy stage adventure, and it was so weird that Sam just let him do it.  Dean ignored the crowd, ignored the headset while Cas ordered everyone else around – presumably to cover – and hustled him off.

Really, Sam thought?  Cas was Dean's stage manager?  That was kind of hilarious.

"Okay, look," Dean said, shoving his headset all the way down around his neck.  He waved away two security guys and even Cas, who swept past them in a flash of black jeans and a black t-shirt with the word "BOSS" on it.  "I get that he's all rebellious or whatever, and he's not hard on the eyes when he loses the smirk, but anyone who screws you over like this is bad news, okay?"

"Dean, he didn't do anything."  Sam ducked away when Dean reached for his head again, but he just pushed the headset down and did something that maybe silenced his mic.  "I just need to talk to him."

"In the middle of a show?" Dean demanded.

"Now," Sam said, because he wasn't taking as much flak as he'd expected but he didn't want to lose momentum.  He didn't want to forget what he was doing just because Dean got all solicitous on him.  "Right now."

"You called?"  Gabriel was _lurking_, and he had wings so of course security wasn't paying any attention to him.

Dean saw him, though, and he scowled.  "No groupies backstage."

"He's not a groupie," Sam said with a sigh.

"I'm really not," Gabriel agreed.  "Trust me, I'm _so_ far from being a fan."

Dean glared.  "Fuck my brother up and I'll slice you into tiny pieces, asshole."

"Okay, go," Sam told him.  "Go back to Cas.  I'm fine."

"You better be fine onstage in four and a half minutes," Dean said.

"I will be," Sam lied.  "I just need to talk to him."

Gabriel watched him go, bright amusement on his face.  "He thinks you like me, Sammy."

"Yeah, well, he's about as real as the white rabbit," Sam snapped, "so his opinion matters a lot.  Tell me what's going on or I'll find a way to drag it out of you."

"What's going on is that I am _trying_ to do you a favor."  Gabriel rolled his eyes like Sam was the one who kept messing everything up, which Sam didn't appreciate in the least.  "You fall on a sword for someone, they feel kind of an obligation, you know?  You're just so hard to buy for; you have no idea."

"I don't want any favors," Sam told him.  "Get me out of here right now, Gabriel.  I mean it."

"Yeah, sorry.  No can do."  Gabriel frowned a little, like it still surprised him.  "I'm trapped, see.  So as much as I'd love to snap my fingers and send you back, it's pretty much all I can do to keep you ahead of the net with me."

"The net?" Sam repeated.  "What do you mean, you're trapped?  Where are we?"

"Not entirely sure," Gabriel admitted.  "And if you don't think that's weird for me, we've obviously never met.  I do know where we aren't, and that's anywhere good, so welcome to the bad side of being old enough to be this awesome."

"The bad side," Sam said.  He wanted to add, _there's a good side?_ but he could hear the crowd noise climbing again and he really didn't think they had a good enough story if Dean came back.  "Look, let's do this somewhere else."

"Bet you have a bus," Gabriel offered.  "Wanna find out?"

If they didn't have a bus, Gabriel had just snapped them into someone else's really fancy traveling home.  Sam had a lot of other things he wanted to know more, so he didn't ask.  "You're trapped," he said, trying to ignore their surroundings.  "Why am I trapped with you?"

"Enemies," Gabriel said, flopping down on the leather couch.  "That's the bad side.  If you're curious.  Turns out some of them are still pissed about this war I started a while back.  Funny thing, witness protection... not as effective as it used to be."

"Gabriel."  Sam glared at him.  "Why am I trapped with you?"

This time there was no eye roll, and Gabriel's smirk had entirely disappeared.  He stared back at Sam with an intensity that might have been disconcerting if Sam didn't, oh yeah, _order angels around_ on a daily basis.  "You really don't remember?"

"Would I be asking if I did," Sam snapped.  He didn't bother to make it a question.

"You apparently took exception to Samael trying to kill me," Gabriel said bluntly.  "Threw yourself in front of the knife.  Thanks for that, by the way.  Looked really painful.  Appreciate you sparing me."

"I threw myself in front of a knife?" Sam echoed.

"You've got to stop repeating me," Gabriel told him.  "I think we can all agree, one of me is enough."

"That's ridiculous," Sam said.  "I'd remember.  And seriously, getting between _you_ and a sword?  Does that sound like something I would do?"

"Sam, it sounds exactly like something you would do."  For just a moment Gabriel sounded tired, and Sam blinked.  "Now if only me returning the favor was something I would do, it's possible that I'd be a little better at it.  As it is, we're stuck with what we've got."

He was surprised enough to ask, "Which is?"

"Which is me trying to keep my bloody sister from killing me over children that shouldn't exist!" Gabriel snarled.  "Your soul is trapped in her stupid game with me.  I have no idea how to get you out, but I do know what will happen if you wind up between us again."  He didn't wait for Sam to ask.  "Serious non-existence.  And not the fun kind with gags and binding, either."

Sam frowned.  Gabriel believed enough of what he was saying to joke about it.  "Would it help if I said I'm not planning to jump in front of any more swords today?"

He didn't think it would, but it was a start.

"No," Gabriel said.

Sam shrugged.  "Yeah," he said, because who knew where that left them.  "That's what I figured."

"Gabriel."  Cas' voice was just suddenly there, in the bus with them, and Sam gave up on surprise.  It didn't look like he was getting answers any time soon.  "You found him."

"Go away," Gabriel said irritably.  "You're just making it easier for her to track us down."

"Cas," Sam said, because this Castiel had wings and if he was really on the outside then there were things he should know.  "Jophiel showed up and told me to leave Gabriel, to let him go.  Those your orders?"

"No," Castiel said.  "That couldn't have been Jophiel."

"Yeah, it was," Sam said.  "I can tell the difference.  She may be trying to help me, but she's not worried about him."  He jerked his thumb at Gabriel, who looked totally indifferent.

"Everyone is trying to help you."  Cas might be talking to him, but he was definitely giving Gabriel the hairy eyeball.  "Samael and Gabriel are both gone.  You're the only one we can reach, and it's – "

He vanished without any more warning than they'd had the last time, and Sam turned on Gabriel.  "What was that for!"

Gabriel wasn't lounging anymore.  He was right up in Sam's space when he turned around, phantom wings giving him all the height no one else could see.  "Angel-free zone, kiddo."  Gabriel was staring past his shoulder, small and dwarfing Sam all at once.  "We have two minutes and I have five questions, so keep your answers short.

"I've been hiding you places I know," Gabriel continued, not waiting for him to agree.  "Unfortunately, since the fallen had their happy family reunion, Samael knows what I know.  Can I use your memories instead?"

Sam didn't like the sound of that, but he wasn't really sure why Gabriel was asking.  If angels needed permission to ransack his brain, that was news to him.  "Since when do you ask?"

Gabriel didn't look up.  "Yes or no, Sam."

"I guess," Sam said.

Traces of light like fire burst over the tops of Gabriel's wings, and it was Sam who reached out when he stiffened.  He was stone beneath Sam's hand, but whatever the hell that was didn't look comfortable.  Gabriel ground out, "Yes or _no_, Sam."

"Yes," Sam said quickly.  "You can use my memories."

"Can I follow you into them."

"Yes," Sam said.

"Can you stop yelling for me every time you find yourself somewhere new," Gabriel said.  The light was cascading down his back now, orange lines like growing fractures in his silvery wings.  "That's like the opposite of not drawing attention."

"Yes," Sam said, even though he could see where this was going.

Gabriel's voice didn't change, but this one came out more like a question than the others.  "Can you try not to get yourself captured, even by friendlies, until I figure out how you're keeping Samael from killing me?"

It was the first time Sam was sure Gabriel felt fear.  "Yes," he said quietly.  Because either Gabriel deserved to live or he didn't, and apparently Sam had already made that decision for himself.  He wasn't about to go back on it now.

The terrible fire had reached Gabriel's eyes, and of course that was the moment he chose to lift his head.  There was no heavenly blue there, not even the bright white glow of barely contained angel.  Just a steady orange burn as he held off whatever was trying to tear them apart long enough to ask, "Do you trust me, Sam?"

It was a little too much like staring back into hell – except that this time he knew who he was talking to.

He hoped.

"I'm working on it," Sam said.

His fingers closed around empty air as he fell.

**   
Beginning to Look a Lot Like Something   
**

"No!  I hate you!  What are you doing!"

Sam opened his eyes to find Dean falling into a potted plant, grabbing frantically at the trunk to keep himself upright before taking the entire thing down with him.  A young girlish shriek – which for once hadn't come from his brother – added just the right touch of hilarity.  He didn't mean to laugh.  He couldn't help it.

"Dean."  A voice Sam shouldn't know wiped the grin right off his face.  "Security doesn't always have better things to do, you know."

"That wasn't my fault!" Dean yelped.  "He totally started it!  Oh my god, Cas, get away from me!"

"I want a slushie too!" the little girl voice cried.  "Mom, can I have a slushie?"

"I fail to comprehend why my offer of a dessert makes me to blame for your sudden lack of coordination," Castiel remarked, sounding genuinely puzzled.

Sam knew that tone, but he knew the other one better, and he was too busy staring at a woman he'd never met to care about how ridiculous his brother and his brother's angel boyfriend were being right now.  Blonde hair and a steely expression made stranger by the little silver snowflakes tucked up against her ears.  Her t-shirt said _I love California,_ and the man sitting behind her with his legs outstretched made Sam's stomach seize.

He tried to get the words out, but his throat wouldn't work.

"Mom!" Dean complained, every bit as believable as the kid yelling for her own slushie.  "Cas is taunting me!"

"I offered you some of my dessert," Castiel corrected, while Sam could only mouth the word _Mom._  "Your reaction comes as a complete surprise to me."

"You dripped your damn sno-cone down my back!" Dean shouted.  "What's wrong with you!"

"You expressed your intent to steal it," Castiel reminded him.  "You didn't specify the parameters within which you expected to receive it."

The man behind their mom crossed his ankles and leaned back in his chair, pretending to close his eyes.  Sam could see them still open a slit – he knew what to look for; he'd watched their dad feign sleep a hundred times before.  "When they come for you boys," John Winchester drawled, "I'm telling them I never saw you before in my life."

"I'm telling them to ticket your car," Mary said.  "It'll be gone before you ever make it back to the parking lot."

"Mom!"  Dean sounded horrified.  Genuine horror, unlike anything he'd managed to fake when Cas was, apparently, treating him like the kid he really was.  "You can't threaten my baby!"

"I think Cas can take care of himself," she told him.

"Ooh, you called your boyfriend a baby," the little girl Sam still didn't recognize declared.  "He's gonna be mad at you."

"Hey."

The hand on his arm made him yank away, almost falling himself as he stumbled back from – 

"Jess?" he blurted out.

Of course it was.  Because if there was any way this could get worse, it would.  They were probably married.  He probably had kids, and he and his parents were gathered at the airport to meet them on, what the hell day was it?  Christmas?  The kids were probably flying home on Christmas and Dean and Cas had driven out for the holiday because Dean wouldn't fly – 

"Hey," Jess repeated, all sympathetic smile and secret promise.  "Let's go get some coffee or something."

"Bring me one too," someone added, and fuck, was that Jess' _sister_?

Jess' sister had a kid named Meghan, he remembered suddenly.  About the right age to be harassing Dean about his language and copying his stupid antics.  Oh God.

_Gabriel,_ he thought desperately.  _Don't.  Please.  This isn't what I meant._

"Chocolate with extra cream?" Jess was saying.

"And no sugar," her sister agreed.  "Thanks.  If you find any anti-coffee," she added, "Meghan's allowance should cover it."

"What?" the little girl demanded.  "What am I getting?  Can I have it now?  Please?"

"You're getting a sno-cone," Dean told her.  "Me too.  You got money, Cas?"

"Why am I required to pay for something you're just going to spill on me?" Cas wanted to know.

"Cas, come on.  Would I do that?"

Sam felt Jess take his hand and tug gently.  He was too shell-shocked to do anything except follow, but he heard his father ask, "Do we have bail money?" as she pulled him away.

"One night in lockup won't hurt them," Mary replied.  "It'll be quieter, at least."

"They're cute," Jess murmured, stepping up against his shoulder as they made their way across the giant observation deck.  Their group wasn't the loudest or the most unruly, but it could be with only a little extra effort on Dean's part.

"Who?" Sam asked.  He had to say something.  He had to pretend.  He'd promised Gabriel, he'd said _yes_.  He wouldn't yell for him just because he was freaked out of his mind and two seconds from dousing everyone in sight with holy water.

"Your brother," Jess said, squeezing his hand.  "With Cas.  They're cute together."

"Yeah," Sam managed.  "Cute" wasn't the word he would have chosen.  "I guess."

"Are they always like that?" Jess asked.  She sounded like she was smiling, but Sam didn't dare look at her long enough to know for sure.  He didn't really want to look at her at all.  Well... he did, which was why he didn't.

"I don't know," he said, and it was the truth.  He'd never seen Dean and Castiel together without some inevitable crisis looming over their heads.  At best, they sometimes managed to sneak off for pie or beer or something else that Dean deemed absolutely essential, no guests allowed, and then they were back by morning.

"But you've met Cas," Jess insisted.  "I mean, you seemed like you knew him when Dean showed up last night?"

It came out too much like a question for Sam's peace of mind.  Maybe it was all a lie, but he couldn't stand the thought that there was another universe where Dean had to knock on his door in the middle of the night, untold stories in tow and so totally unsure of his welcome.  Even if the story was Cas, which Sam had never actually been _told _about, but everyone had known that before Dean anyway.

"Yeah," he said, forcing the word out without flinching.  "I know him.  I just... it's just – he and Dean aren't usually..."  _Happy,_ he wanted to say, but he couldn't.

"Quite this silly?" Jess said.  She was definitely smiling now.  "I guess the holidays bring out the kid in all of us."

"Yeah," Sam managed.  "I guess they do."

He told himself that he couldn't go the rest of the day without looking at his girlfriend.  They ordered coffee, which was almost normal, even if it was hard for him to let go of her hand long enough for her to pick up a stirrer.  He barely resisted the temptation to ask her about herself: what she was doing, if she liked it, how she'd been since he saw her last.

She was older, there was no doubt about that.  He didn't know what that meant, if she was still at Stanford... if he was.  Maybe they'd graduated together.  She was wearing an engagement ring, but no wedding band.  He thanked God for small favors.  Had they set a date?  Was Dean going to be his best man?  When had Jess cut her hair?

They took the long way back to the observation deck, and he managed to keep his questions to himself as the instinctive panic started to abate.  No, it wasn't real.  But it wasn't dangerous, either.  Except to his mental well-being.  None of them were going to turn into demons, or zombies, or die in some freak airport accident involving horsemen or possibly the devil.  The only thing he had to worry about was losing them to the darkness and dreams when Gabriel came for him.

He had to wonder, though.  These weren't his memories.  He'd never seen Jess like this, had never met her sister's daughter.  He'd never known his mom.  How much of it was Gabriel making up?  How much of it was something Sam hadn't been able to admit he wanted?  How much control did he have over a vision that was at least nominally of his own making?

_Brady,_ he thought.  _I bet Brady's going to call now._

His phone vibrated, and his hands clenched instinctively.  Jess noticed and her arm, linked through his, squeezed carefully before taking the extra coffee cup so he could fish his phone out of his pocket.  It wasn't Brady's picture on the screen, though, and he almost turned away.  Like he could shield Jess from the reality of her non-existence.

"Gabriel," he said, trying to keep his voice even.

"Merry Christmas," Gabriel's voice replied.  "Seen Michael lately?"

"What?"  Sam frowned.  He was struggling to go from _you asshole_ to the potentially more productive _what are you talking about?_  "Of course I –"

Dean was standing by the stairs.  Ghostly wings flashed white and brilliant behind him, like he was standing half in sunlight, and Sam swallowed hard.  "Yeah," he said.  "Now that you mention it."

"Samael will sense him too," Gabriel said.  "I can't show my face.  But if you go with him, I'm dead.  I'm dead, Sam.  No pressure."

"You should have left my family alone," Sam snapped.  He hung up before Gabriel could reply.

Jess looked worried.  "What's wrong?" she asked.  "Is someone in trouble?"

"No," he said, trying to smile.  "No, we're fine.  I'll catch up with you, okay?"

"Sam."  Jess folded her arms, coffee and all.  "Tell me.  I can take it."

"I know."  He didn't think he knew, but apparently he did, so he was willing to go with it.  "I'm gonna be right behind you, okay?  You can get it out of me in front of everyone."

"Promise?" she said, searching his expression.  "I will, you know.  The first thing I say when I get back is gonna be, 'Sam got a phone call.'"

"I know," he repeated.  He was careful not to look at Dean again, because whatever angel-ness had hidden Gabriel from security might not be enough to disguise Dean from someone who – kind of? – knew him.  "I'll tell you all about it."

"Kiss," she said.

He dropped the phone in his pocket, put his hand on her shoulder, and kissed her as gently as he could.  She smiled up at him and he almost kissed her again.  He almost hugged her, wrapping her up in his arms as if wishing hard enough would give him something like her to hold onto again.  As if he could trust like that again.

"Don't blame me if Dean comes looking for you," she called over her shoulder, and he waved to let her know he'd heard.

When he turned around, Dean was right there.  Sam drew up short before he'd taken a single step, and Dean smirked.  "Weird," he said, "but sort of funny from the other side.  Must be an angel thing."

"Okay," Sam said, "I'm getting tired of asking this, but seriously.  What's going on?"

"Lucifer," Dean said.  "Him and Gabriel, not good buddies.  I'm working on it.  Meantime, Samael's gonna waste good ol' Gabe the second I snatch you away.  Stay or go, your call."

"You can get me out of here?" Sam demanded.

"Off and on," Dean said.  "Right now it's more on than off, but it's not a get out of jail free card.  I'll lose you in a minute and then it's up to Gabe again.  Cas doesn't think he can do it."

"But Gabriel dies if I leave," Sam said.

Dean's expression didn't change.  "Looks that way, yeah."

"I'm staying," Sam told him.  "Tell the others to back off.  I don't think the whole team's on the same page on this one."

"I'm trying," Dean said.  "I can't find Samael.  Raphael's acting weird.  Lucifer's not exactly a known quantity, and I'm not even sure of Anna.  There's only so many of 'em I can turn into rabbits, you know?"

"Great," Sam said.  "Infighting among the most powerful beings on earth.  This should go well."

The corner of Dean's mouth turned up.  "I'll send you some help.  Gotta go," he added, but at least he had time to say so before he disappeared.

Sam looked around, expecting Gabriel in his place.  Instead there was just the airport, as festively decorated as before, and the phone in his pocket was vibrating again.  Probably Jess.  Or the other Dean, ready to haul him back to – 

Brady's picture was on the phone when he pulled it out.

It wasn't until he'd lifted it to his ear that he spotted Gabriel, braced against the stair railing and smirking in his direction.  "Just kidding," he said.  "You can if you want, though.  Control it.  I don't have time to design every detail; you might as well do some of the work."

"Dean says you pissed off Lucifer," Sam told him.

Gabriel's smirk stayed firmly in place.  "Time to go."

The airport vanished.

**   
Ancient History   
**

He was standing on the side of a mountain – and Gabriel was still with him.  Sam wasn't sure which one he wanted to look at more: the sharp drop, clouds like fog rolling over the green below, or the archangel who shouldn't be there.  He shouldn't, right?  Hadn't he been splitting them up on purpose?

"This is what a tortilla looks like," a small voice said.  "It's not what it tastes like, though."

Sam looked down to find a little blonde-haired girl sitting in the dirt.  She was wrapped in skirts and an square poncho that hung sideways off of her shoulders.  She was also wingless, which didn't fool him in the slightest.

"That's because you didn't make it out of corn," Gabriel offered, and Sam reached for the chain around his neck.

He realized the ring wasn't there about the same time he saw Gabriel – really saw him – and thought maybe he wouldn't need it after all.  Gabriel didn't have wings either.  Which meant that, whatever Castiel's kid was doing here, this version of Gabriel probably wouldn't kill her.  Not if Sam had any control at all.

"I had corn," Maribel said.  "It didn't come out right."

"I think that's a secret woman trick," Gabriel told her.  "They'll teach you when you're older."

"I want to help," Maribel insisted.  "I'm not a child."

"Hate to break it to you, kiddo," Gabriel said.  "But you are.  You can thank your dad for that."

"Daddy says it wasn't his fault."  On her small face, Maribel's frown looked dangerously close to a pout.

Sam could practically hear Gabriel roll his eyes.  "Your father, then."

"Wait, you're together?" Jo's voice interrupted.  "I thought angels could sense each other."

Sam looked across the bare outcropping toward the huts that huddled against the treeline.  Jo was climbing toward them, bright embroidered blouse and skirt not appearing to slow her down at all.  It made his head hurt, trying to figure out who everyone was over and over again.  "Angels?" he repeated.

"Gabriel," she said.  "Samael.  I thought Gabriel was staying away from you so Samael couldn't follow him to you and bring you back to life.  At least, that's what Dean says.  Cas says he's trying to keep an eye on you remotely and it's not working."

Sam stared at her.  "Wait, what?"

"Hello!"  Jo waved a hand in front of her face.  "What's Gabriel doing with you?  Doesn't that make it easier for Samael to find you?"

"Are you really here?" Sam demanded.  "How do you know about Samael?"

"Do I look like I'm here?" Jo said, clambering up onto the stone beside him.  "Hi, Gabriel."

"Hi, Jo," Gabriel replied.

She gave him an odd look before frowning at Sam.  "What's with him?"

"That's not Gabriel," Sam said.

He could feel Gabriel glaring at him.  "You know, I'm getting a little tired of your attitude, Sammy boy.  Anything you can do, I can do better, and that includes playing at being human."

Sam refused to look at him.  "Did Dean send you?" he asked Jo.  "How did you get here?"

"I let Cas kill me," she admitted.  "Not quite as violently as you, thank god.  Or whoever.  Mom was pretty pissed, but Dean's angel swears he can bring me back.  Plus Dean said she can kill them both if I get lost.  I thought that was excessive, but Mom liked it."

"Okay," Gabriel said.  "Time to go, munchkin.  This conversation is clearly not for young ears."

"I'm not young," Maribel informed him.  Sam was already reaching out to stop her from leaving, but the look he got from Gabriel was enough to make him hesitate.  The cold disdain there made him doubt, just for a second.

"You're like a week old," Gabriel said, and Sam felt his stomach twist.

"Gabriel?" he blurted out.

"What," Gabriel snapped.  "I think I can keep her from getting eaten or stepped on for as long as it takes to walk back to the house.  I'm perfectly domestic.  I'm a domestic lamb."

Okay, that made no sense, but Sam took some comfort in it.  This wasn't really Gabriel.  It was just another character in the ongoing charade, and he felt himself relax a little.  "Yeah, okay," he said.  "I know.  Thanks."

At least Jo waited until he and Maribel were a little farther away before she whispered, "A domestic lamb?"

Sam shrugged.  "Like I know.  Where are we, anyway?"

Jo gave him an incredulous look.  "Why would I know that?"

"You really let them kill you?" Sam asked, because there wasn't any answer and they both knew it.

"Jophiel says other angels are trying to follow Samael in," Jo said.  "To get you out, mostly, but Dean thinks they're being sneaky about it.  Pretending to be people you know, maybe.  He and Cas were mad at her for something; I didn't get all of it."

"What's going on out there?" Sam wanted to know.  "Please tell me you're not all gathered around my bedside or something."

"Basically everyone's yelling at everyone else," Jo said.  "It's kind of a mess.  It's actually more normal in here."

Sam caught her eye, and it was her turn to shrug.  "For certain values of normal," she added.

"You didn't come here to get away," Sam said.

"No, I came to keep them from possessing someone who looked like me."  Jo gave him a look like it was obvious, and where had he been for the rest of the explanation?  "At least you have one person you know won't suddenly turn into an angel and try to kidnap you."

"I can tell," Sam said.  "The angels from the –"  He waved his hand at, well, everything.  "The illusion, I guess."

"I figured."  Jo sounded like she wasn't sure why they were talking about this.  "Still keeps them from sneaking up on you though, right?"

"Yeah, maybe," he admitted.  "And, hey... I don't mean to sound ungrateful, okay?  Thanks.  It was way weirder not having anyone to talk to."

"Except random angels?" Jo said with a grin.  "Yeah.  I haven't gotten used to that either."

The day got more frustrating from there, and he grew more and more grateful for Jo's presence.  Not that he wanted her dead, but it was harder to take the death thing seriously when he didn't _feel_ dead, and she didn't _look_ dead, and Gabriel – the real Gabriel – didn't show until almost nighttime.

Long enough for Dean to come looking for his kid.  Long enough for him to be pissed that Sam had let her go off with Gabriel, which Sam almost felt bad about until it turned out that Gabriel had taken her to find Cas instead.  Cas was some kind of village shaman, which Sam tried really hard not to laugh about, especially when it became clear that Dean was silently in awe of him and could barely string two sentences together when he was around.

"I thought Maribel was their kid," Jo whispered to him at one point.  "Like, both of theirs."

"I dunno," Sam whispered back.  It was a relief to have someone who knew as much about what was going on as he did.  "Everyone treats her like she's just Dean's."

"But Gabriel took her to see Cas," Jo murmured.

"Who knows why Gabriel does anything?  Maybe he thought it'd be funny to embarrass Dean."

That made Jo smile.  "Yeah, that sounds about right."

Maribel got scooped up by the women as soon as breakfast broke – tortillas, and Maribel was right, they were some kind of magic because they sat weirdly well and lasted for hours, even when the only side dish was vegetables.  Apparently Ellen and Jo and Sarah all lived in one building, and they included Maribel.  (No Ruby this time, Sam wondered?  No Jess?  He couldn't decide whether he was relieved or disappointed that his mom wasn't there.)  Sam and Dean and possibly Gabriel lived in the next hut over, and he couldn't tell if they always had a place for Cas or if Dean just tripped over inviting him back for dinner.

"That's the funniest thing I've ever seen," Jo remarked, after she'd spent most of the day helping with the laundry and pretending she was somehow too sick to weave.

"Oh, it gets better," Sam told her.  "Picture Dean as the lead singer in a band.  Guess who his stage manager is?"

Jo actually giggled.  "Does Gabriel..."  She glanced around, and Sam knew what she was going to ask before she found the words.  "Make all this, or what?"

They were sitting outside in the evening light, sunset coming late to the high elevations.  Gabriel, the fake Gabriel from the rural scene that Sam still couldn't place, had glared at them all the way through dinner, but at least he was ignoring Maribel again so Sam figured he'd take it.  Not that he had any real choice.

"Not sure," Sam said.  Mostly because it was true and partly because he wasn't sure how much responsibility he wanted to own.  "He asked if he could use some of my memories, but –"  He waved like that should be enough of an explanation.  "I have no idea where we are, so."

"Is he trying to keep you busy?" Jo wanted to know.  "Or is this part of the hiding thing?  Surround you, surround us, with enough fake people and anyone who's looking has too much extraneous stuff to sort through to recognize us right away?"

"Maybe," Sam agreed.  "He called it hiding before, so maybe that's it.  He hasn't exactly given me a play-by-play."

"But you see him, right?" Jo pressed.  "Dean says he's keeping you away from Samael, and whenever she gets too close, Gabriel grabs you and puts you somewhere else."

Sam raised his eyebrows.  "Oh, is that what's going on?"

She gave him a disbelieving look, and he shrugged.  "You've just told me more than anyone else has.  All I know is that Gabriel's always in a hurry and he says if I don't go with him he'll die.  So far he hasn't pissed me off enough for me to let him."

"Dean says they're looking for Samael," Jo offered.  "Apparently she and Lucifer have a thing, which is weird, because I totally thought she was with Anna, but who can tell with angels."  She paused, then added, "I guess if you live long enough, maybe you have a thing with everyone."

Sam didn't really want to think about it.  "So which one wants Gabriel dead?" he asked.  "Samael, or Lucifer?"

Jo shook her head.  "Who can tell with angels," she repeated.  "Cas got all shifty when Dean asked him what Lucifer had to do with it, and the next thing I know they're doing their staring thing and the rest of us might as well not exist.  Whatever it was made Dean jump in after you, and when he came back he said you needed company.  He said he was going to go talk to Lucifer.  And I wasn't supposed to tell you that part, if you're curious."

She didn't look very sorry, and Sam tried not to assume his brother was doing something stupid.  "I'm pretty sure Gabriel likes Lucifer," Sam said.  "At least as much as he likes Michael, which... now that I think about it, I guess might not be that much."

"They all like each other," Jo said.  "Until something happens, like God disappearing or someone having a tantrum or a butterfly flapping its wings, for all we know.  I'm still sort of surprised that you got in the middle of it."

"Gabriel helped us," Sam said defensively.  "He deserves better than a sword through the heart."

"Yeah, but would he say the same thing about you?" Jo asked.  "I mean, believe me, I'm all about not letting people stab each other to death unless it's totally necessary.  But they're angels, Sam.  Who knows what any of this means to them?"

"Dean's an angel," Sam pointed out.  "He still cares if we live or die."

"Dean's different," she said.

"Dean always is," Gabriel's voice said, and Sam reached for Jo's arm without thinking.  When Gabriel appeared in front of them, wings and all, he wasn't sorry.

"Oh, wonderful," Gabriel sneered.  For the first time, he looked every bit as pissy as his alter ego.  "Now there's two of you.  I suppose this is Michael's idea of helping.  One of these days, someone should teach him basic arithmetic."

Sam and Jo were looking at each other when Gabriel reached out and slapped Sam on the back of the head.  "That's for whining about being alone," he said.  And the mountains were gone like they had never been.

**   
Double Lines of Dominance   
**

It took him a second to shake off the disorientation and the darkness.  Maybe a few seconds.  The whole world seemed larger now, and closer, more wild and a little frightening when he reached out and nothing moved the way he thought it should.  "Jo," he whispered.

Or he tried to.  It came out as a whine.  He didn't move again, didn't try to talk, just stared through startled eyes at the shadows all around him.  Living shadows.  He wasn't stupid: he was surrounded by things that were very much alive, but he'd lay money that none of them were human.

He'd know if they were demons.  Sam took some comfort in that.  He thought he'd know if they were angels, but he couldn't be sure of that.  As his eyes adjusted, he could tell they weren't angel-shaped.  It didn't mean much, but it might explain why he had paws instead of hands.

"Jo," he said again.  This time it came out more understandably, but still nothing like his actual voice.

There was no answer.

_Gabriel,_ he thought, because he'd promised not to call just because he was confused.  _What the fuck._

Sam managed to extricate himself from the group – and it was a group – of prone but breathing forms.  Sleeping forms.  _Let sleeping dogs lie,_ he thought, with something that could slide uncomfortably close to hysteria if he wasn't careful.  He managed to get out of the circle before his breath shuddered out of him: a distressed sort of woof that only confirmed what he was seeing.

He was only a few feet away from what looked like a pack of wolves.  And, if what he could see of himself was any indication, he belonged with them.  He and Gabriel were going to have to have a talk about turning him into anything _not human._

"Hey," Dean said, and his head swung in a way that was definitely not natural.  Not Dean's voice, but Dean.  He'd recognize his brother anywhere – 

And this was proof, because the lupine form prowling down the hillside toward him could not have formed the word "hey."  But Sam had heard it, and he'd recognized it, and he lowered his head in greeting instinctively.  Wolf Dean walked right into him, shoulder brushing against his, muzzle sliding over his back, and Sam turned into it without thinking.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

Sam swallowed, following when Dean sat back on his haunches, and Dean let himself be pushed over with something that could have been a laugh.  Sam rolled to the ground beside him, still _not thinking,_ because he remembered with vivid clarity the last time Dean had hugged him.  And he shouldn't.  Hugs from Dean should blur together into some kind of daily comfort and they just didn't, lately.  Too few, too far between, too sorely missed for Sam to do anything but take this contact when it was offered.

"Hey," Dean repeated.  It wasn't a protest.  It wasn't anything like a protest, so Sam just pressed harder against him as he said, "We should stay a few more days, right?"

"Yeah," Sam muttered.  He buried his face in Dean's fur, and it wasn't even weird when he closed his eyes.

"Really?"  Dean sounded a little surprised.  "What about work?"

Work, Sam thought?  For wolves?

"Don't care," he mumbled, since Dean seemed to be waiting for an answer.

"'Kay."  Dean clearly wasn't going to argue, and a distant part of Sam's mind thought that was probably his cue.  He and Dean balanced each other, so if Dean wanted to stay, Sam should probably be listing the reasons they shouldn't.

There were only two problems with that: Sam didn't know what the reasons were, and he really didn't care.

Dean rolled on top of him, licked his face, and pushed himself up.  And up.  His wolf outline dissolved in the light of dawn, replaced by the more familiar Dean-shape Sam had known forever.  "Want some breakfast?"

Sam stared.  _Gabriel, _he thought again.  _What the _fuck.

So they were shapeshifters, apparently.  And Jo wasn't with them.  Sam wasn't sure which one alarmed him more.  Okay, missing Jo alarmed him more, but it wasn't like werewolves had a lot of good memories for him.  He was trying to distract himself by figuring out where the hell they were camping when the rest of the "pack" started to peel itself awake.

Bobby.  Not paralyzed, four functioning legs that turned to two when he tried to take responsibility for breakfast from Dean.  Adam, which made Sam's throat tighten, and he ground his teeth to keep from shouting for Gabriel the second he saw him.  Ash, which was weird in a way Sam couldn't quite figure out.

And Gabriel.  Again.  Sam didn't know if an archangel pretending to be a wolf would have wings, but given the jokes Dean made about Zachariah he'd guess the answer was yes.  This Gabriel didn't have any, even when he changed into his human form.  Also present were Jophiel and Sach, but their wingless human forms were unexpectedly male and Sam had no idea how he recognized them.

Cas, finally.  The last one up, and the one who looked least happy about camping, and he refused to shift until Dean dripped maple syrup on his coat.  Unfolding into his human guise, Castiel gave Dean a baleful look that was mollified only by more syrup and a lot of pancakes.  Sam tried not to mind that Cas sat on the other side of Dean and made him push over far enough that he was pressed up against Sam again, because maybe that made it harder to eat but they were staying, weren't they?

Castiel didn't like to camp, but Sam wanted to stay.  So they were staying.  It was a petty thing to find satisfaction in, but Sam wasn't feeling very magnanimous lately.

He was also feeling more and more creeped out by Jo's absence.  Not least because there was an obvious gender bias at their camp, and he was sure he would have noticed it if it had happened before.  _Gabriel, _he thought, just in case the archangel could actually hear him.  _Where's Jo._

He didn't get an answer, of course.

Dean took Cas out of the park for a supply run after breakfast, and Sam was a little surprised when the rest of them just melted into the trees.  They'd stuck pretty close together overnight, but when he looked away from the road he found Jophiel already gone.  He saw Bobby and Sach loping off toward the woods.  He caught Ash, still in human form, crashing in a hammock, so at least some things stayed constant.

What he didn't see was Gabriel – not until he went to make sure the fire was out, and he almost tripped over Wolf Gabriel's sprawling form.  "Hi, Sam," he drawled, and how he did that when he was a wolf Sam would never know.  "Wanna go swimming?"

He hesitated, but yeah.  Swimming actually sounded okay.  And it was a dream, right?  Or a... thing?  A not real thing?  This place wasn't real, Gabriel wasn't real, and Sam wasn't really a werewolf.  He thought if he wanted to swim, after all this, maybe he was allowed.

"Yeah," he said.  For a moment, he wondered if he had swim trunks, but then he realized Gabriel probably meant _as a wolf._

Okay.  That was fine.  Weird, but he wasn't... against it, exactly.

He should be.  Maybe that was the dream, or something.  The same way he recognized Jophiel and Sach, the same way he didn't freak when Wolf Dean licked his face, maybe there were things about the scenario he just accepted.  Despite his totally not awesome history.

It was easier to follow Gabriel on four legs than on two.  And strangely, that was how Sam finally recognized the campground.  The fallen trees in the river triggered a distant memory, a brochure Jess had kept on her desk for months: Yellowstone.  They were at Tower Fall in Yellowstone.

Or near it, anyway.  Sam was pretty sure the actual campground would have other humans – or any humans – and this one definitely didn't.  But he knew this river.

"Dare you to dunk your head!" Gabriel called, and he shook himself.

"I'll dunk yours!" Sam retorted, stumbling a little on the bank and splashing heavily in when he thought too much about what his legs were doing.  He was still tall, for a wolf, and there were _four_ of them.

"You're welcome to try!"  Gabriel wasn't nearly far enough away when he issued that challenge.  Sam blundered after him, eating ground even in the water, and Gabriel spent too much time looking over his shoulder.  Sam grinned as he lurched into the other wolf, sending him splashing to one side with sheer mass.

_Disadvantage of being unangelic,_ he thought.  Gabriel was tiny when he didn't have the unstoppable force of heaven behind him.  Sam had stopped noticing how much of his height the wings made up until they weren't there anymore.

He felt something clamp around his back leg and he went down with a sputter.  He was trying to laugh when he forced his head back above water, but apparently wolves didn't like to get quite so thoroughly drenched.  It wasn't easy to fight down the panic until Gabriel pressed an apology into his side and shoved him, not coincidentally, toward calmer water.

"I can never tell," Sam said, trying not to choke again.  "When you're being a jerk to be a jerk, and when you're being a jerk because you don't know how to be nice."

Gabriel sounded amused as they sloshed into the shallows and looked around: Sam for something clean enough to drink, and Gabriel for who-knew-what.  "I'm not pulling your pigtails, Sam."

"Dean's in charge," Sam said, because that was a certainty in his mind.

"And Castiel's his bitch," Gabriel agreed amiably.

Sam was pretty sure Cas wouldn't appreciate that characterization, but it spoke to his point.  "So what do you want?  I know you don't want to be second to Cas."

Gabriel snorted.  "Like Michael would have me.  Eventually I'd run out of tricks, and he'd run out of patience.  And when I say 'eventually' I mean 'in a week.'"

A creepy kind of dream scenario was sneaking up on Sam.  He could see it coming, so it wasn't doing a great job at stealth.  He just wasn't sure he wanted to voice the thought himself.

"I'm not taking you either," he said, because this wasn't real.  He didn't know why he was worrying about it.  "You're my friend, Gabriel.  I like hanging out with you, but you can't have my rank."

He'd meant _place_.  His place with Dean.  Only after it came out as "rank" did he realize that might be more appropriate.

If Dean was the pack's alpha, then it was a pretty safe bet that Cas was his mate and Sam was his second.  His beta.

The same rank Gabriel would gain by association if he started courting Sam.

Sam did know things about wolves.  He'd just never thought the need for that knowledge would be so... immediate.

"We're not friends," Gabriel said.  "You and me, Sam, we're partners.  We're co-commanders of an angelic garrison.  And I need you to focus on what that means for the garrison, not on how lonely and emo it makes your pathetic excuse for a social life."

Sam bared his teeth as comprehension crashed home.  It might be a wolf instinct but right now he liked it a lot.  Because of course the trickster could suppress his angelic form if he wanted to.  Of course he could look human, like anything he wanted, even enough to fool Sam's slightly more-than-human senses.  His brother had offered to do it for Cas, hadn't he?

It was suddenly very clear that Gabriel had been toying with him.

"We are not," Sam snapped, "_co_-commanders.  I'm in charge.  If your ego can't take it, I think you can find better ways to sulk than jerking me around in your stupid reindeer games."

Gabriel's wings burst free even as he shifted, and Sam was standing up right in front of him because he _did _have a height advantage and if Gabriel was going to fuck around then he could damn well _use_ it.

"Bring Jo back," Sam snarled.  "Right now.  Or I'm shouting for Samael."

**   
I See You   
**

It wasn't the first time Gabriel had ended an argument by snapping him somewhere else.  It might have been the first time Sam got something he wanted in the bargain, though.  He was just too distracted by his surroundings to notice.

He wasn't afraid of heights.  He did have a healthy respect for the things that kept him from falling from them: namely walls, solid ground, and the engines of mechanical vehicles.  Failing that, something to hold on to.  His hand found something rough and rope-like and he grabbed, staring down into a canyon of trees and falls.

"Okay," Jo's voice said from somewhere nearby.  "That was unexpected."

His fingers clenched on the rope – vine, his mind corrected – and he turned, very carefully.

Jo was perched on the wide branch beside him, hands carefully testing a narrower one that wound its way through the air in front of her.  She was blue, and he so wasn't going to ask.  "What happens if we fall?" she wanted to know.  "I mean, if we die here by accident or something.  I assume they can just bring us back?"

"I guess," Sam managed.  He was torn between adrenaline, relief, and a distant sense that he should be furious with Gabriel right now.  He was also a little concerned that _he_ seemed to be blue, too.  "I dunno, he didn't tell me."

"Where were you in the last one?" Jo wanted to know.  "Did Gabriel split us up on purpose?  How is that helpful?"

"It's not," Sam said.  "He just did it to be a jerk."

"Like that's new," Jo said, and when had she decided the angels weren't all awesome?  The realization that Jo didn't hold them in high regard was belated, and he felt kind of ridiculous for having missed it for so long.  "I was a mermaid."

It took Sam a second to process that.  "You mean, you –"  He stopped, because really.  What was he supposed to say to that?

"Yeah."  She looked more amused than annoyed.  "I didn't know he could turn us into... you know.  Other things.  I guess I should have expected it."  She held up her own hand and studied it, apparently unfazed by the blueness.

"You're taking it pretty well," Sam said, because yeah: she was taking it better than he had, if it came to that.

"I didn't have any idea what I was getting into when I said yes," Jo said.  "I'm kind of expectation-free."

She leaned forward then, arms folded on the branch in front of her, and rested her chin on them.  "This looks familiar," she added, which really wasn't what he'd thought was coming next.

"We're blue," Sam blurted out.  Because he kept waiting to get past that, and it kept not happening.

"Yeah," she said, frowning down at her feet as she kicked them out in front of her.  Away from the branch, with nothing behind them but the tops of the trees and a river that fell away into the distant valley below.  "We're..."

She was barefoot, and that was the only thing he had time to process before she lifted her head again.  "Sam, are we on _Pandora_?"

He blinked, looking over his shoulder.  His balance wasn't an tenuous as he thought it should be – and he had a tail.  Why did he have a tail?  Why did Jo have a tail?  And where was Gabriel this time?

"Can he do that?" Jo was asking.  "Just set us down in a totally fictional – okay, of course he can.  Why am I even asking."

"We have tails," Sam said.

"Yeah," Jo said.  "I'm pretty sure we glow, too."

"Why?" Sam demanded.

Jo shrugged, and he saw her tail flick with an echo of the movement out of the corner of his eye.  "Because it's dark here a lot?  I don't know.  Probably because it looks pretty."

It had taken his this long to come up with a more specific question.  "What's Pandora?"

"You know, from the movie.  Avatar," she said.  "I want to see it.  There's aliens and hunting and they blow shit up.  It looks pretty awesome."

"Avatar," he repeated, because now that she said it, it did sound kind of familiar.  "Okay.  Okay, right.  The blue people and the planet.  They blow stuff up?"

"A lot of stuff," Jo agreed.  "Hopefully we skip that part while we're here."

Sam looked around.  Nothing looked like it was in imminent danger of exploding, but then, he didn't remember much about the movie.  "Aren't there supposed to be dragons?"

"Yeah, like pterodactyls or something."  Jo looked around too, like one of them might come sweeping up out of the canyon at any moment.

And, because this was Gabriel's playground, one did.

Two, in fact.  Giant, winged, lizard-like birds.  With riders.  Sam honestly couldn't tell if the screaming was coming from the dragons or the blue people on their backs.  He held very still either way, because he was pretty sure he didn't want to draw the attention of anything going that fast.

"So, we probably know them," Jo said, as the dragons wheeled away across the multi-storied rainforest.  "Guesses?"

"We know them?" Sam repeated.

"From what I've seen," Jo said, "Gabriel puts the people we know into prominent roles.  If those are the only two aliens we've seen besides us, the smart money's on them being someone we know."

"Dean and Cas," Sam said before he thought.  Then he had to keep going, because it was true and she'd probably want to know why.  "They're the constants.  Everyone else seems to come and go.  I mean, until you."

"Even we got split up," Jo reminded him.  "But you always see Castiel and Dean?  I guess that makes sense – Dean, anyway, since he's probably the person you're most comfortable with.  And if Castiel's been traveling with you, maybe you expect him to be there too.  Does Gabriel read your mind?"

"He's not supposed to," Sam said, frowning.  "Anna says he can't.  But he asked if he could use my memories to 'hide' me and I said yes, so.  I guess it's different in here."

"It's not real," Jo pointed out.  "Maybe we only exist inside someone's mind right now.  Maybe it's yours.  Maybe it's not people _we_ know; it's people _you_ know.  And that's why."

"That's a really creepy thought," Sam said.

"Here's a better one," Jo said.  "If Dean's always in it, he's probably one of the main characters, right?"

He'd seen the previews.  It was coming back to him.  "An army guy and an alien princess?  She's got a bow and arrow, right?  You think that's like Cas' sword?"

He didn't see her tail coming, but he felt it flick against his shoulder in decidedly reproving way.  "Why do you always make Cas the girl?" Jo asked.  "He's the one who comes to a strange place, with stranger people, and tries to learn enough about them to convince them to do what he says.  He even takes on a body that looks like theirs so he can talk to them."

"Is the alien princess a jerk to him?" Sam countered.

"Yeah," Jo said unexpectedly.  "She yells at him a lot.  Slaps him around.  Basically reminds him how little he knows whenever she gets a chance."

"Oh."  Sam considered this.  "That does sound like Dean."

"Right?"  Jo sounded like she was grinning.  "We're so going to see this movie.  And I'm going to enjoy it even when things aren't blowing up, because I'm pretty sure the alien princess teaches him to hunt."

Sam was already considering the possibility of finding a movie poster, and whether or not Ellen would let them slap it up on Dean's door.  The movie had to be new.  He could get a lot of mileage out of this.  "Do you think we could –"

"Sam."

He felt his tail wrap hard around the branch, stabilizing him before his stomach could drop.  Because he'd met the archangels.  He'd met all of them.  He didn't know Samael very well, but he recognized her voice.

"Yeah," he said, keeping his eyes straight ahead.  "What do you want."

"Ideally," she replied, "Gabriel already neutralized.  My second choice would be you getting out of the way so that I can neutralize him now."

"You're an archangel," Sam told the canyon.  He wasn't about to look at her, and he didn't dare call her attention to Jo.  "I can't possibly be in your way."

"No," she agreed.  "But if I kill you, Michael will kill me.  As long as I believe the threat Gabriel poses can be countered without sacrificing myself, that will remain my goal."

"Gabriel works for me," Sam said.  "He's not a threat to you."

"Gabriel works for no one," Samael said.  "Not even God.  Not anymore.  He is a threat to Castiel's new creation, and as such, he must be removed."

"Castiel's creation?" Sam repeated.  He'd heard Cas had some special connection with God now, but Dean had always made it sound like it was temporary.  "What creation?"

"The children," Samael said.  She didn't seem disappointed, like it didn't surprise her that a human wouldn't be able to put the pieces together.  "The newest angels.  Gabriel will destroy them, and we have already lost too many.  The host won't bear another betrayal."

"So you want to kill him," Sam said.  "What, that's not betrayal?  He can't kill them, but you can kill him?"

"He won't be killed," she said.  "Lucifer wasn't killed."

That was all she said, and Sam wasn't sure if that was all there was or if she just didn't expect him to understand.  "They're not even yours," he said.  He didn't understand, but he got enough to guess that Gabriel would _wish_ he was dead.  Since there wasn't anything he could say to that, he was left with dragging out the conversation long enough for someone else to find them.

"They belong to all of us," Samael said.  "But by human reckoning, Lucifer has yours.  Do you have no care for your own son?"

It was like the words had no meaning.  She said them, he heard them, and he knew in some other context they would mean that the person she was talking to had a child.  But he didn't.  It was one of the things he knew about himself; it was part of his identity.  She couldn't change it just like that.

"Here's the thing," Gabriel's voice drawled.  "I sent them here as an apology.  Humans, they're so fragile, never know what they're going to take offense at next.  Still, not like I don't have experience with that.  Could have been more careful.  Mea culpa, have a vacation.  Having you show up and totally freak them out is, hmm... counterproductive_._"

"Gabriel."  Samael sounded flat, and Sam knew enough to recognize that as bad.

_What are you doing? _he thought.  Gabriel was crazy and obnoxious but he had a survival instinct that rivaled the devil.  _Get out of here._

_Do what you did to me on the Bounty._  It wasn't his thought that was suddenly there in his mind.  It was Gabriel's voice.  _Do it with your mind._

"Sam," Jo whispered.  He felt her tail twine around his wrist, and he reached blindly for her fingers.  He couldn't see.  The darkness was everywhere, and he used to think that was the demon blood.  He knew now that demon power only looked black from the outside.  Inside, the blood burned red and hot.

Whatever this was felt quiet and cold and then _bright_, bright white like nothing he could ever see and that wasn't him, that was Gabriel.  He didn't know how he knew.  He just knew that he had Jo crushed to his chest and it was starting to hurt, to flame around the edges, like the lines of orange fire that had fractured Gabriel's perfect wings worlds ago.

He heard someone scream.  He didn't know if it was Gabriel or Samael.  He felt himself start to fall and there was nothing he could do because the rest of the world was already gone.

Except for Jo.  He held onto her, because she was the only thing left.

**   
Back in Time   
**

He was the one who was screaming.  Something was all around him, holding him down.  There were restraints on his arms and his legs and so help him, if Gabriel had sent him back to the panic room then Samael wouldn't have to worry about killing him because Sam would _destroy_ him.

With a strength born of hysteria and fear Sam managed to yank himself free, and now there were hands on his arms and they were still trying to hold him down.  He couldn't hear anything over the sound of his own voice.  He'd lost Jo.  He'd lost Gabriel.  He thought screaming was really the least he could do.

Until something sharp and cold slapped him in the face and he snarled, lunging after it – 

And it held him.  It let him slam his body up against the restraint.  It wrapped itself around him, arms and body and wings.

_Wings._

"Sam," the voice was saying.  "Sam.  Sam.  Sammy."

The fact that he could hear it made him realized he'd stopped screaming.  He couldn't seem to talk, though, couldn't disentangle his fingers from the shirt crumpled under his hands.  He was crying.  He thought he was shaking, but he was being held so hard he couldn't tell.

"Sam," Dean's voice said again.  "It's okay.  Sammy.  Sammy, you're okay.  It's all right."

"Jo," he croaked.  He didn't know how Dean understood him, but he did, and he wasn't letting go which right now was all Sam really wanted.  That and not burning to death.  Or falling.  Or being torn to pieces.  All of which had seemed to be happening at once just seconds before.

He still wasn't totally sure he was alive.

"She's okay, Sam, she's right here.  Jo's here, okay?  She's fine.  She's better than you."

Which didn't necessarily equal "fine," he was pretty sure.  He drew in a shuddering breath, lifted his head, and fuck, he really was clinging to Dean in the middle of a crowded room.  His own crowded room, which meant that Jo had totally lied.  Or just not told him the truth.  They _had_ been standing around his bedside.

"Okay," he muttered, and the word caught in his throat.  God, he was _crying._  Actually crying.

Dean's wings – still weird – eased a little, and he wasn't holding Sam quite as hard anymore.  "You're okay," he said, one more time.  "We're good.  Gabriel got you out."

Something in his chest seized, and it was like being socked in the gut.  "Gabriel," he gasped, throat hot and raw and everything was stupidly blurry but Dean looked white.  Like he was losing blood, like he was about to pass out... like Sam was holding him up as much as he was holding Sam up.

"We're okay," Dean repeated.  "You gonna make it?"

Sam let go of his shirt to clench his hands on Dean's arms.  "Where's Gabriel?" he demanded.  He could hear his voice rasp.  "Where – what happened?"

Dean shook his head, and Sam saw him swallow hard.  Like Dean cared about Gabriel, what the fuck.  What was that even supposed to mean?

Then Dean's wings fell, and Sam saw Castiel's ashen face behind him.

"Gabriel is losing," Castiel said simply.

Sam craned his neck, gaze latching onto Jo for just long enough to be sure she was alive.  She did look better than he did; Dean was right.  Ellen was holding her, but their arms were loose around each other.  It looked closer to a normal hug than a death grip.  What he still didn't see was Gabriel.

"Where is he?"  Sam took in Jophiel, pressed into the corner like she was trying not to be there and not looking any better than Cas.  He saw the closed door, the jacket on the bed – the one he must have fought his way out of when he thought he was being held down – and the stupid teddy bear with the Mickey Mouse ears, still sitting in its chair.

No one had taken its seat.  Sam didn't know whether that was creepy or poignant or just another sign of how much none of them were thinking right now.  How long had it been, anyway?  He'd been gone for days, but Jo was wearing the same thing he'd seen her in the day Gabriel left him the chocolates and then disappeared like he had better things to do.

It was the night Samael had...

It had to have been.  He still couldn't remember.

He felt Dean stagger against him, grip bruising his arms and Sam just took it, because what else was he supposed to do?  "Where is he?" he insisted, staring Castiel down like he could will a reply out of him.  Dean clearly wasn't with it enough to answer anymore, and that freaked Sam out more than anything.

"He's elsewhere," Castiel said.  He didn't look good, but he looked a lot better than Dean at this point.  "We haven't been able to track him except through you."

"Then what the fuck am I doing here?" Sam demanded.

"Gabriel must have done it," Castiel said.  "You and Jo both awoke at the same time, albeit with different degrees of reaction.  That was just before Gabriel's grace started to wane."

"He's fighting," Sam said.  "He's fighting Samael, and we're here.  Why are we here?"

"She's trying to protect the children," Jophiel said.

Dean's wings flared, not white, but sickly light like he was trying to force himself up and he couldn't do it.  "This isn't the way," he said tightly.  "We can't keep killing each other, Jo; it's a fucking waste."

Sam glanced at Jophiel.  She said nothing, but the expression on her face was clear: _Tell Gabriel that._

"What's wrong with you?" Sam asked, adjusting his grip so he had his hands under Dean's arms instead of on top of them.  He held him up more easily then, even as Dean's knees buckled and Sam shoved him back toward the bed.  "Whoa, whoa – what do I do?  Cas?"

"The archangels are connected," Castiel said, and his voice was too full of regret for Sam to hear everything he said.  "Killing Gabriel will wound Samael as well."

He wanted to protest, wanted to say _she said she wouldn't kill him_ or maybe _no one is killing anyone._  Even better, _Gabriel can't die, he doesn't know how._  Or, at the end of the day, _Dean won't let this happen._

He didn't have time to say any of it before Dean keeled over, hand over his chest like he was having a goddamned heart attack, and he just stopped breathing.  "Dean – Cas!" Sam burst out, falling down beside him and pulling his hands away, feeling for a pulse.  "What do we do?"

"He is in mourning," Castiel said quietly.  "He will recover."

"Mourning," Sam repeated, horrified.  He couldn't get out more than that one word.

"Gabriel is dead."  Cas' voice, competent though it was, sounded hollow.  "Samael will no doubt go into exile, and the circle of creation will falter in their wake.  It has happened before."

"When Michael threw Lucifer into hell," Sam said.  Dean was totally still under his hands, and okay, he was an angel, but he was doing a damn good impression of a dead angel right now and that wasn't making anyone feel any better.

"Yes," Cas said softly.  "We will need him to come back from this."

Sam didn't know if he meant Dean or Lucifer, and he really didn't have time to ask.  If this was like the Omega 13 device, then every second they stood around being stupid was a second they might not get back.  "Cas," he said, standing up.  He brushed a hand over Dean's shoulder, wishing he could touch his wings.  "Send me back."

Cas stared at him with that look of total non-comprehension he'd worn so many times before.

"I'm not kidding," Sam said.  "I know you can do it.  Send me back to the moment Gabriel sent us away."

"Back to Pandora," Castiel said, like he wasn't sure.

Like it was a real place.

"Yeah," Sam said, because he didn't have time to ask: how much Castiel knew, how much any of them knew, how much of what Gabriel made up wasn't as fictional as it seemed.  "He tried to get me to help him against Samael.  Then I fell, and we woke up here."

"He returned you," Castiel said.  "When he engaged with Samael she must have been distracted enough that you could be moved out.  To safety.  He likely would not wish you back in harm's way."

"He likely would," Sam retorted, "if it meant saving his life."

"Sam," Castiel began.

"Cas," Sam snapped.  "I can help him!  My eyes were closed; I couldn't see anything.  I could have been there."

"Losing Gabriel has traumatized Michael," Castiel said, ignoring his perfectly valid time travel argument.  "Losing you would kill him.  I can not allow you to take such a chance."

"I'm not leaving Dean," Sam said.  "I'm not stupid, Cas.  Killing me kills him, I _get_ that.  I get that better than you could ever imagine.  I'm doing this for him, for all of them, and I'm not going to mess it up."

"Castiel," Jo said quietly.  Sam didn't dare look at her, afraid that if he let Cas look away he'd never get his attention back in time.  "He might be able to help."

"I know he can help," Castiel said.  He was still staring at Sam, but his patience was fraying and Sam knew with a sudden blinding clarity that Cas wanted to be where he was _right now._  He wanted to be the one beside Dean, the one who could throw himself into it to make everything better... the one Dean needed the way he needed Sam.

"I'm less sure that Gabriel will let him help," Castiel was saying, and Sam bit back the urge to tell him, _it isn't love, Cas.  Dependence isn't love._

They loved each other in spite of the need, not because of it.

"He kicked me out once," Sam said instead.  "So he does it again.  We're no worse off than we are right now."

He could see on Castiel's face the knowledge that that was probably the best case scenario.  But Sam had spent his entire life building a whole lot of something out of nothing, and he wasn't about to stop now.  Not when he was finally and literally on the side of angels.

"Be careful," Castiel said at last.

He didn't fall, he just – he was just there.  Standing on a tree branch bigger than the last one, wide enough for three people to walk side by side, and they were gonna need it.  There were three of them, all right.  And a nice calm walk was definitely too much to ask.

Almost too late, he saw himself disappear.  Gabriel flung a hand out even as Samael drew her sword, and Sam turned just in time to see him and Jo knocked from their perch.  They _had _fallen, it hadn't been an illusion this time.  They tumbled together into nothingness, which he figured was at least better than staying to hit the bottom.

Samael's attention returned slower than his did, and he didn't stop to wonder why.  Gabriel had warned him, he'd said, _don't get between us,_ so Sam didn't.  He just pushed.  Mentally, without anywhere near the effort it should have taken, but he wasn't trying to burn.  He was just trying to... push.

To push until Gabriel fell.

It was surprisingly effective, but of course Samael followed him, and they could _fly_.  They could fly with swords.  If Gabriel ever pulled his, and as soon as Sam thought it he had a sword in his hands.  Him.  Not Gabriel.  He didn't wonder about that either, just flung it at them end over end, because this was his reality too.

It didn't hit Samael.  It didn't come anywhere near Samael, but the rhythm of her flight broke and this time Sam pushed her too.  Harder.  If it burned, he wasn't going to cry about it.

That was when Gabriel looked up.  He was distracted.  He had reason, obviously, but no way were they going to work together on this.  No matter what he had planned before.  Sam reached for him anyway.

After that, all he saw was white.

**   
Inheritance   
**

"You're very persistent," Lucifer's voice said from somewhere behind him.

Sam's fists clenched, but he was careful not to turn.  Sometimes looking made things real.  Sometimes it didn't.  He wasn't taking any chances in the middle of a vast white nothingness.

"One might almost think Gabriel had done something for you," Lucifer continued.  "A favor, maybe.  One so great that you feel you owe him, I don't know... your life?"

Sam would have rolled his eyes if it wasn't the _devil_ talking.  He was pretty sure you weren't supposed to roll your eyes at the devil.  He was completely sure there was nothing he could say – nothing that would make the situation better, anyway – so he kept his mouth shut.

"I'll tell you something, Sam."  Hearing Lucifer say his name never failed to set his teeth on edge.  "A family secret, if you will."

Great, Sam thought.  This should go well.

"I like Michael," Lucifer continued.  "Against my better judgment sometimes, but no one's perfect.  And he likes you."

Yeah, Sam thought.  Definitely headed straight for Creepy Town.

"Gabriel's our brother," Lucifer said, like this was news to anyone.  "Our _younger_ brother.  And I promise you, there's no deal you could have made with him that Michael and I can't get you out of."

"Okay," Sam said.  He turned around, because this was past weird and rumbling right toward what the fuck.  "First off, I'm starting to get why Gabriel's such an asshole.  You guys are great role models, you know that?  And second, what the hell do I owe him?  The guy faked Dean's death a billion times and trapped us in endless reruns of TV's Worst 100.  He's lucky _I_ haven't killed him."

"And yet," Lucifer said, studying him through disconcertingly blue eyes.  "You haven't."

"Yeah, they taught us in kindergarten that guns aren't the way to solve our problems," Sam told him.

The corner of his mouth quirked, and for a moment Sam thought Lucifer might actually smile.  "Gabriel has been shot many times," he said instead.  "So far it hasn't seemed to stick."

"We tried pointy sticks," Sam said.  "Holy fire worked better."

Lucifer raised his eyebrows.  "You burned Gabriel with holy fire?"

The tone was deceptively calm, but Sam wasn't stupid enough to ignore the fact that Lucifer could turn him to dust without even trying.  He seemed, somehow, so much more dangerous than Gabriel.  Like Gabriel's arrogant, bitchy facade meant that he could be reasoned with, while Lucifer's cool distance was exactly that: distance.

Unspannable.  Uncrossable.  Inevitably alien.

"No burning," Sam said.  "We might have... trapped him.  Long enough to ask him some questions."

"I suspect you're not the first to wish you could do that," Lucifer remarked, and the chill faded slightly.  "It does, however, leave me with my own questions.  Still unanswered."

"I don't owe him anything," Sam repeated.  "He's my friend, and I'm tired of seeing my friends get killed.  Isn't that enough?"

"No one wants Gabriel dead," Lucifer said.  He said it like he believed it, which was odd but Sam was standing in the middle of nothing and it was all glowing white, so odd was a relative thing.  He did, at least, know better than to call Lucifer a liar to his face.

"Then someone screwed up," Sam told him.  "Because he died.  C –"  He started to say it, then realized belatedly that invoking other angels' names to Lucifer might not be something they would thank him for.  "I got sent back in time to try to help him."

"Yes," Lucifer said.  "I know."

Sam blinked.  "You do?"

It probably wasn't the smartest thing he could have said, but he was fresh out of relevant observations.  Let alone questions.

"I followed Samael in," Lucifer said.  "She was understandably distraught."

"Distraught?" Sam repeated.  "She was _distraught_?"

"I stopped to seek your opinion," Lucifer said.  "On my way."

Sam couldn't do much more than stare at him.

"Is it normal for human children to ask repetitive questions?" Lucifer asked.  Eyeing Sam, he added, "Stop me if you've already answered this one."

"What are you talking about?" Sam wanted to know.  It wasn't until after he'd asked that it occurred to him he should already have a clue.  Samael's foreign words crashed home in a way they hadn't before and he demanded, "Do you have my kid?"

Lucifer seemed to consider this, which all in all Sam figured was a bad sign.

"I take exception to the possessive," Lucifer said at last.  "My brother did grace me with one of his children, but I'm not sure by what definition he could be considered 'yours.'"

Sam wasn't sure either, but he didn't have a good feeling about it.

"Cas says Maribel is Dean's," he said.  "Dean's and his."

"That's because Castiel is a romantic traditionalist," Lucifer replied.

Sam couldn't help the expression that flickered across his face, and he knew Lucifer saw it because he almost smiled again.  Agreement.  It had been agreement on his face.  Sam was more than a little uncomfortable sharing understanding with the devil, no matter how Dean claimed him, but Castiel.  Who couldn't agree on Castiel?

Normal angels, Sam reminded himself.  Normal angels weren't fond of Cas.  They hadn't been fond of Cas for a long time.  Cas had been kicked out, the door slammed shut behind him, and Sam didn't want to think about what might have happened if Gabriel hadn't taken him back.  But here was Lucifer...

Another fallen angel.  Was it possible that Lucifer liked Castiel because he saw something of himself there?

"You look conflicted," Lucifer observed.  "Let me guess: scared yourself by agreeing with me?"

Sam tried to focus on what he knew.  "Samael said he's mine."

"Then I also take exception to her use of the possessive," Lucifer said smoothly.  "I may be my father's son, but I belong to no one."

"Lucifer," Sam said, and the name felt weird in ways he didn't want to think about.  He was going to get an answer, and it was going to be one he could understand.  "Do I have a son?"

He hated that he hesitated.  He still couldn't get his mind around the concept, let alone the actual possibility.  He supposed Cas was the one he should be asking.  Cas wasn't here, though, and Lucifer was.  He'd deal with the inevitable confusion later.

"Adamel shares some passing similarity with you."  Lucifer might have said it a little slower than he'd confessed the rest.  Like he had to think about it.  Like maybe he wasn't sure he wanted to admit it after all.

Sam meant it to come out as a question, but somehow it didn't.  "Adamel," he echoed.

Lucifer hadn't lost that almost imperceptible reluctance.  "Castiel named him."

"Castiel named him Adamel?" Sam repeated stupidly.

Lucifer eyed him.  "I suppose this speaks to my concern about humans and their repetitive questions.  Shall I assume the answer is yes, then?"

Something finally clicked with Sam, and he blurted out, "Did you bring me here to ask me for parenting advice?"

"No."  Lucifer managed to look like that was the last thing on his mind.  "I brought you here so you could augment Gabriel's power with your own so-far unique angel-repelling abilities."

His confusion must have shown.  In fairness, more than half his brain was still trying to process the son thing.

"If you help Gabriel," Lucifer said, "and I 'help' Samael, then between the two of us we may be able to keep either of them from accidentally killing the other."

Sam was afraid his mouth had temporarily disconnected from his brain.  "That sounds like the most uneven game of Four Square ever."

"I don't know what Four Square is," Lucifer replied.  "I suggest this, however, not to even the odds but to remove the element of chance entirely.  I will hold Samael back as long as you keep Gabriel from going too far."

For such a timeless place, Sam felt very aware of the seconds ticking by.  He agreed not because he understood, but because he knew he didn't have a choice.  He couldn't keep Lucifer from doing whatever he wanted... except maybe taking Sam as a vessel, and that didn't seem to be a part of this conversation.  And it wasn't like he didn't want Gabriel back, so if someone had a suggestion – even if that someone was the devil – he felt obligated to listen.

"You know I'm not going to say deal," he said, when Lucifer looked like he was waiting for more.  "Or yes, or anything that could in any way be interpreted as me giving you permission for anything."

Lucifer's expression turned vaguely amused, which was just one more variation of creepy on him.  "Sam, I've only just gotten my family back.  I'm not going to risk their wrath for something so currently unnecessary as a better vessel."

"Wow," Sam said.  "That was so reassuring.  Really.  You should do motivational seminars."

"I can make a gesture of faith," Lucifer said.  "Fortunately for you, I do believe you want Gabriel to live.  As I'm confident in my own ability to keep Samael from dying, you may do whatever you think best to accomplish this goal.  Including exactly what I've just told you to do."

"Fine," Sam said.  "Put me in a position to do it, and I'll think about it."

Nothing changed.

Finally, he rolled his eyes at Lucifer.  "Okay, what?  What now?  Why are we still standing here?"

"Not just repetitive," Lucifer mused, studying him with the truly uncomfortable appearance of a scientist about to dissect a specimen.  "But repetitive in a way that actually impedes answering.  Interesting."

Sam knew, of course.  Exactly what he was talking about.  He glared, and without thinking he snapped, "I want joint custody."

Lucifer almost looked like he was thinking about it.  "You wish to share responsibility for Adamel's education?"

"I'm part of the family," Sam reminded him.  "I want my angel rights."

"You're not an angel," Lucifer countered.

"I'm his dad," Sam said.

Lucifer frowned a little.  "You didn't create him."

Sam almost said, _oh, let me ask Cas if he wants to let me see my own _son.  But since Cas hadn't even _told_ him it was his son, it seemed likely that angels looked at these things differently enough to cause problems.  So instead he said, "He was created in my image."

This seemed to win him some points.  Or at least stump Lucifer for a moment, and Sam considered that a victory.

"Come on," Sam said.  "How many of the other angels do you trust, really?  Jophiel won't let anyone not stationed at an earth garrison take care of her kid, and she has way fewer enemies than you do.  Whatever you think of me, you gotta agree I'm less of a threat than your brothers and sisters."

"You are also significantly less competent than my brothers and sisters," Lucifer said.

"I'm a lot more competent than they are when it comes to human kids," Sam retorted.

"Adamel is not human," Lucifer said.

"Or angel," Sam finished.  "It's gonna take more than just you guys to raise these kids, and you know it.  Let me help."

"I'm not saying yes," Lucifer said carefully.  "Or... deal.  Or anything that could be interpreted as me giving permission for anything."

Sam caught himself just before he would have been amused.  "Funny," he said, in a tone meant to convey how much it wasn't.  "But I know where you live."

"As threats go," Lucifer observed, "that lacks specificity."

"Vagueness is scary," Sam told him.  "Are we gonna go save your family from itself, or what?"

Lucifer didn't stare at him for nearly as long this time.  He didn't say anything, either.  He was just there, standing in the middle of white blankness, and then he wasn't.

Neither of them were.

Sam was right back on his tree branch, arm outstretched.  He felt Gabriel's hand clasp his before he saw him, which might have been because his eyes were still adjusting, and he pulled.  Hard.  He could only assume that somewhere, Lucifer was doing the same to Samael, because nothing followed them when they went over the other side.

**   
Tribunal (the short version)   
**

Sam felt gravity skew just before his butt hit the floor.  It was the harshest landing yet.  In fact, it was the only time he'd noticed himself landing at all.  He didn't know what that meant, but he knew his hands were empty because they were pressed against the floor to either side of him.

Gabriel was gone again.

He was going to develop a serious phobia about falling by the time this was all over.  Sam was pretty sure that wouldn't make his life better.  He stared at the blue-striped, glitter-covered wall in front of him and contemplated not getting up.  The spinning colored lights couldn't make him dizzy if he stayed on the floor, right?

"Sam!"  It was Jo's voice, and he jerked toward it, because yeah.  He was supposed to be keeping an eye on Jo.

"Sam," she said again.  She sounded breathless and quick and very present.  She was also wearing roller skates, which tipped onto their sides and clicked hard against the green floor as she went down.  Apparently on purpose.  She slid, baseball-style and strangely neat, right to his side.

"Hey," he said.  "That was pretty good."

"I'm learning how to fall," she said.  "What's going on?  What are we doing back here?  This is Gabriel's illusion again, right?"

"I guess."  Sam looked around, reluctant to look at the place because he knew as soon as he did he'd have to deal with it.  He was getting tired of the random changes of scenery.  "Is this a –"

"S'cuse me," Dean's voice interrupted.  "Coming through.  I'm not kidding; I'm trying to move here.  Seriously, what are you – get out of the way!"

Sam lifted his head to see Dean, awkward and falling more than rolling, uncoordinated as he landed in a heap partly on top of Jo.  "Hey," he said, like he'd just sat down there on purpose.  "So.  Where are we?"

Sam stared at him.  Dean had wings, blurry and insubstantial as they folded around Jo and disappeared through the floor.  "Dean?" he asked.  He wasn't sure what good it would do, but he couldn't just stare.

"Last I checked," Dean agreed.  "Gabriel screwing with us again?  I thought this was your thing, not everyone's."

"Do you remember?" Sam blurted out.  He said it before he realized that if Dean didn't, he was going to have to come up with some kind of explanation.  But this was clearly the real Dean, alongside the real Jo, and he was so relieved to have them here that he'd just stopped thinking.

"Don't want to talk about it," Dean said, frowning across the rink.  "Uh, is that _Lucifer_?"

Sam turned, not sure whether the idea or the fact should startle him more.  Because it was Lucifer.  With wings and skates and a thoughtful, calculating expression that looked totally out of place inside this teenage haven.  It was also Cas, over by the entrance to the rink, and Sam spared a moment to wonder how he'd managed to get cast as the wallflower.  The non-skating wallflower.

Then he figured _obviously_ and decided they were just lucky Cas was wearing his own clothes instead of the old suit and trenchcoat.  Not that there was anything bad about the old clothes, he thought, just in case Dean was wrong about the mind-reading thing.  Castiel just felt more like Sam's... like _their_ Cas, when he dressed like them.

Sort of like them.  Whatever.  Why was he analyzing Cas' clothes?

"Why are they here?" Jo wanted to know.  "Isn't Gabriel fighting Samael?  Are we here to help?"

Okay, so Castiel's magic time travel forgetfulness didn't work on other angels, but it did work on humans.  He'd try to remember that.   Right now, though, all he could tell any of them was, "I have no idea."

"It's not just us here," Dean said, which seemed kind of ridiculous since they were blocking a fair amount of traffic on the crowded rink.  The flow of skaters parted around them easily, like they were used to people falling and refusing to get up.  There didn't seem to be anyone regulating it.  Them.  Anything.

"So where's Mom?" Jo asked.  "Or Jophiel?  They were in the room too."

"And Lucifer wasn't," Dean said.  "I don't think that's it."

"Should we try to find Gabriel?" Jo wanted to know.  "Or, I don't know... Samael?"

"I don't think Samael's here," Dean said.  "There's three archangels in the building, including me, and she's not one of them.  But there's something else."

"Who's the third one?"

Sam made a face when Dean waved him off.  He looked like he was concentrating, but with Dean that could mean anything from stopping the apocalypse to ignoring the alarm clock.  Sam thought about getting up while he waited for Dean to come up with something useful.  Advantages: mobility.  Disadvantages: everything else.  He decided to stay where he was.

"Who's the third one?" Jo mimicked, poking him in the ribs.  "Dean, Lucifer, Gabriel.  You want to bet against me, I'm happy to take your money."

"Goddesses," Dean said suddenly.  He was looking in Castiel's direction, and Sam thought he'd picked an odd way to swear until he realized Castiel wasn't just watching them.  He was watching the air hockey table where three very young-looking children were playing.

One of them was Maribel.  Her opponent was a girl he'd never seen before.

The boy watching had his back to Sam, and Sam figured that was just as well.  He didn't have a lot of childhood pictures and it wasn't like he ever saw himself from behind.  He wasn't sure he wanted to know how much the "in his own image" threat had been true.

"Jophiel's gonna bust my ass back to hell," Dean said.

Sam looked at him, but Dean's gaze had shifted to the table too.  "What about goddesses?" Sam prodded.

Dean shook his head, like he thought he'd already said it and had just been reminded they couldn't hear him.  "Gabe's on trial," he said.  "Apparently the trickster thing pissed a lot of people off.  Who knew?"

"On trial?" Sam repeated.  In the back of his mind, he heard Lucifer mocking him for his "repetitive questions" and okay, maybe he should try to stop doing that.  But his life had been just that weird lately, and he thought he was entitled to a few requests for clarification.  "What does that mean?"

"Probably nothing good," Dean said, bracing his arm against Jo and reaching out to Sam as he tried to push himself up.  "You guys stay here.  I'm gonna go find out what's going on."

"Oh, like that's happening."  Jo didn't try to move until Dean had found his feet, unsteady but vertical again.

"We're going with you," Sam agreed.  He wanted help standing up, but he knew better than to yank on Dean's hand.  His brother was spectacularly uncoordinated when it came to any wheels smaller than a bike.

Sam surrendered Dean's grip to Jo, who might be able to keep one of them on their feet but definitely couldn't get them both there, before he edged his way over to the wall.  Somehow, no one tripped over him.  He used the railing to pull himself up and found balancing a little easier when he started from a standing position.

He must have missed the explanation of why company wasn't a good idea – Dean always had one – because Dean was saying, "I'm not sure I trust Lucifer and Cas alone out here with the kids."

"I thought you and Lucifer were BFFs now," Sam said before he thought.

"I thought you were gonna quit texting with teenagers," Dean retorted.  "What's the matter, slow night at the garrison?"

"Have to do something to block out the sound of you and Cas not screwing each other," Sam told him.  "You're hard on the electricity, you know that?"

"Is he still saying that?" Jo demanded, before Dean could answer.  "Dean, no one thinks less of your angel because he isn't a virgin anymore.  Geez.  Get over it."

"Gabriel's grace just disappeared," Dean said.  "I'll explain to you how much I hate you both later."

"Disappeared?" Sam repeated, and even as he said it he realized he was doing it again.  "Is he gone?  I mean," he added quickly, "is he somewhere else?"

"No."  Dean was actually pulling Jo, which just went to prove that angels _could_ roller skate when they tried.  Sam did his best to keep up.  "He's here; his grace is just kind of..."  He pushed his free hand toward the floor.

"Falling?" Sam guessed.

"No, it's –"  This time Dean used both hands, the one that was still holding Jo's notwithstanding, and made an awkward crushing gesture.  "It's just –"

"Smooshed?" Jo offered.

"Pushed down," Dean said, like he'd suddenly noticed they were talking.  "His grace is being suppressed by something stronger than he is.  Probably nothing good."

He didn't seem to realize he'd already said that, but by then they'd made it to Cas, and Sam didn't have time to point it out.

"Better if they're out here," Dean said.  As though it was the continuation of a conversation they'd started before.  "At least if everyone can see them, you'll have as much help as you'll have trouble.  And I know Lucifer creeps you out, but I'm pretty sure it's mutual.  You wouldn't have given him a kid if you didn't think he'd defend them, right?"

In his head, Sam assumed.  They'd been having this conversation silently until they got close enough to talk aloud.  Or until Dean remembered that he and Jo _couldn't hear them._  This whole having angels for relatives thing was way more weird than Sam had expected.

Possibly because he hadn't expected his brother to be one of them.

"Nice try," Jo said.  "You're not guilting me into volunteering to stay with the kids.  No offense, Cas."

"Did I say you should stay with the kids?" Dean wanted to know.  "No.  Come on."

"I'm going with you!" Jo exclaimed, then blinked.  "I mean, yeah.  Okay.  Let's go."

Castiel gave Sam a look that reminded him of the way Dean used to complain about angels who wouldn't stop walking through his dreams.  Cas didn't have to say anything to make his point.  He never had.  And right now, given his expression, Sam was fairly sure that he and Jo were safer with Dean.

Who was heading through the food court off the rink toward the party rooms on the other side.  Sam didn't think they should ever suggest the word "party" to Gabriel, let alone anything more powerful than Gabriel, but it was clearly too late.  Dean was throwing open one of the doors and striding inside like everyone in the world owed him an invitation.

Jo was right behind him, and Sam could only hope they wouldn't regret this.

His eyes went to Gabriel as soon as they were inside.  Partly because he was so much the focus of attention.  Partly because he was saying, "I don't know what you think I did!" and Sam had never heard him sound so genuinely bewildered.

"Hey, guys," Dean said.  "Sorry to interrupt, but that's my brother you've got there."

Sam gave him a quick look – it would never not be weird to hear that mean someone else – before sizing up the other four people in the room.  All women, all oozing power, and suddenly Sam wondered if having Jo with them would hurt or help them.  Stronger than Gabriel?  Really?

"No, seriously," Gabriel was saying, and now it was an open question whether he was addressing the women or Dean or all of them at once.  "I have no idea what's going on!"

"Yes," the woman in black said calmly.  "That's part of your punishment."

"Hi," Dean said, waving a hand in her direction.  "S'cuse me, important business, I get that.  Wanna give us the short version?"

"I don't even know who you are!" Gabriel protested.  "Any of you!  What am I doing here?"

Sam wondered that a lot, but it was unnerving to hear the question coming from Gabriel himself.  He wasn't smiling.  He didn't even look particularly innocent.  He just looked bewildered and kind of afraid.  Fear wasn't an expression Sam had seen Gabriel pull off believably in the past.  Not under any circumstances.

"For your deceit," a woman with an ankh declared, "you are sentenced to a truth you do not know."

"An appropriate lesson," another woman added.  She was wearing a cloak of feathers, which seemed wrong with angels in the room.  "When you learn what it is you've forgotten, you will be free to rejoin your brethren."

"Now wait just a minute," Dean began.

A woman wrapped in rainbows gestured, and the room lit up in a way that was all too familiar to Sam.  "We're leaving," he said under his breath to Jo.  He found her hand with hers, and he wished there was some way he could inconspicuously take Dean's.  "Hang on."

Then everything went white.  He hoped that somewhere, someone on their side knew what was going on.

**   
Mutatis Mutandis   
**

At least he didn't fall this time.  Not on arrival.  Not even on departure, as far as he could remember.  It had only been the same bright light Lucifer used – which didn't actually reassure him – instead of Gabriel's constant giving in to gravity.

And he had company.  As at the roller rink, he had Jo on one side of him and Dean on the other.  He was even holding Jo's hand, though she dropped it to turn in her chair and stare around the room.

The old, large, expensive-looking room.  Vaguely familiar, too, which shouldn't surprise him at this point except that he'd only recognized one of the places Gabriel sent him, even after he'd asked if he could hide in Sam's mind.  Or whatever he'd been doing.  Sam doubted he'd get a real answer if he asked.

"Where's Gabriel?" he asked, turning to cover the other side of the room and coming up empty.

Well, not completely empty.  It looked like a classroom at a very exclusive school.  Or maybe a mansion.  Maybe both.  Gabriel's fondness for science fiction movies should have been more obvious, Sam thought, given what he liked to read.

"He's hard to track," Dean said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and eyeing the contents.  His wings were wispy and insubstantial over his shoulders, but Sam found himself taking comfort in the sight for the first time.  Weird, yes, inhuman, definitely, but it wasn't like Dean had cornered the market on supernatural freakishness.  And at least this way he could be sure it was the real Dean sitting next to him.

"Because they suppressed his grace?" Jo asked.  She was whispering, and when Sam looked up, he saw a white-haired woman at the front of the room frowning sternly at them.  Everyone else in the room – students, Sam guessed – looked like they were trying to pretend their seats were empty.

"Yeah."  Dean didn't bother to keep his voice down, but a chime sounded from somewhere and suddenly everyone was moving.  Noise rose as people gathered books and bags and started talking over the teacher's final announcement.

"Two pages on the application of powers for education," she called, her voice penetrating the chatter easily.  "Ilyanna, Doug, Kitty.  Consider yourselves lucky you're on your way to mission prep or I'd make you stay and write yours now."

Sam felt Jo jab him in the arm.  He stopped trying to fit books into the bag he'd found on the floor beside him long enough to glance up and see the woman at the front of the room frowning at them again.  Or still.  He offered, "Sorry, Ms. Munroe," but it wasn't enough to keep Dean from opening his mouth.

"Okay, whatever," his brother said.  "I'm pretty sure our fake mission is about as important as this fake class, so."  Dean smiled the smile that cared the least, flipping a pocketknife end over end before he caught it by the handle and pointed it at the teacher with a wink.  "See ya."

Sam exchanged glances with Jo even as Dean headed for the door.  She shrugged, swinging her bag over her shoulder, and Sam saw the name "Magik" embroidered on the front of her – well, it had to be a flightsuit, didn't it.  He wondered if that made him Doug or Kitty.

"Ms. Pryde."  The teacher's frosty tone could only be directed at them, now hurrying after Dean.  "There is no room for disrespect in this classroom."

Dean gave her the bird without turning around.  Sam didn't have time to wince before a gust of wind slammed the doors shut in their face.  Dean kept walking – straight through them, and Sam guessed that answered that question – and Jo got an arm up just in time.  She was only half a step ahead of Sam, but instant metal and light slammed into heavy wood, and the doors parted for them reluctantly.

"Nice," Sam said, giving Storm an apologetic smile as he backed through after Jo.  "Thanks," he added over his shoulder.  "Less disturbing than going through Limbo, right?"

"We need to get out of here," Jo said.  "I know what happens to Ilyanna."

Sam scoffed at that.  "Please.  At least you live."

"What are you doing?" Dean demanded, turning on them in the hallway to shove Sam's bag off his shoulder.  "This isn't real.  We need to find Gabe and get out."

"Well, duh," Jo said.  "What were we just saying?"

"Cas is on his way," Dean continued, like he hadn't even heard her.  "He's in a snit about the kids."

It was barely enough warning before Cas swept around the corner, his own flightsuit uniform giving him back some of the imposing presence he'd lost when he ditched the trench.  Sam couldn't help grinning when he saw the name "Colossus" embroidered on the front of Cas' uniform.  Probably a good thing Dean had never liked the X-Men enough to learn much about them.

"Sam, Jo," Castiel said, and it was almost a greeting.  He was getting better.  "I'm glad you're safe."

Sam blinked.  He _was_ getting better.  Who was teaching him human pleasantries?

"Dean, the children are here."  So he didn't wait for either of them to answer.  They were probably too surprised to respond anyway, Sam thought.  "But I can't get to them, and I can't communicate with them."

"I'm sure the kids are fine," Dean told him.  "They may be pissed about the Loki thing, but goddesses don't exactly have a history of offing children."

"Wait, what?"  Sam was pretty sure he'd missed an important part of that conversation.  Maybe more than one.

"That depends on the religion," Castiel said darkly.

The door behind them shuddered, and Dean clapped Cas on the shoulder.  "Let's go," he said.  "Maybe they're at mission prep, or whatever.  I'm guessing Gabe is, anyway, and if we find him we probably find them."

Cas looked more alarmed at that.  "You think they sent him to the children?"

"Come on," Dean said, when someone started banging on the door from the other side.  Sam hadn't even seen it close, and he had no idea how it was being held shut now.  "This isn't about us, remember.  Gabe's the one they're watching.  They won't let him do anything stupid."

"Okay, I'd like to know what's going on."  Jo managed to get in front of Dean as he turned for the front of the building, and Sam raised an eyebrow.  How did Dean know where they were going?  "Is Gabriel still in trouble?  What happened to Samael?"

"No," Dean said, "he's in trouble again, and I have no idea.  They've cut us all off in here; it's the creepiest thing."

"It's not unfamiliar," Cas said quietly.

"Yeah, no, sorry."  Dean still had his hand on Cas' shoulder, steering him down the hall.  "Sucks to be you.  I'm gonna get you headphones or something, seriously.  You need music.  Or like, books on tape, or whatever you'd listen to.  What would you listen to?"

"Hello," Jo said, rolling her eyes.  "Still here.  Right in front of you."

"Samael's not with us," Dean said.  He looked both ways down the hallway they'd just intersected, then headed right.  Jo had to hurry after him and Cas, falling into step beside Sam.  "Unless they did something weird to her too, and she's even further under the radar than Gabe."

"Who's they?" Sam wanted to know.  "And where are we going?"

"Bunch of goddesses," Dean said.  "Kali seemed like she had the biggest chip on her shoulder, but Iris was the one who sent us here.  Aset, Freyja... they convened a tribunal or something.  Pretty sure they're keeping an eye on the whole punishment part of the deal, but I don't think they'll keep us from finding Gabe."

"Indeed," Castiel said.  "I believe we are intended to."

"Goddesses are punishing us," Jo repeated, giving Sam a look like, _Seriously?  This is what you do for fun?_

"No," Dean said.  "They're punishing Gabe.  We just lucky enough to be his ticket out."

Castiel's hand came up, resting on the elbow of the arm Dean was using to steer him through the halls.  Their wings overlapped.  Sam had no idea how they kept walking like that, but Dean didn't even seem to notice.  "Lucifer," Cas said.  "Lucifer has found the children."

"What!" Sam blurted out.

"Good," Dean said.  "That answers one question."

"Isn't that bad?" Jo demanded.  "What does Lucifer want with the angel kids?"

"One of them's his," Sam told her.  "And mine," he added, glaring at the back of Cas' head.  "Which, by the way, someone could have _told_ me."

Dean stopped walking, and Sam flinched as he went right through the light of his wings and almost crashed into his brother's back.  His Dean sense still worked, apparently – he drew up short just in time – but it didn't apply to the wings.  "Sorry," he muttered.  He thought one of the wings twitched in an approximation of a shrug as he stepped back.

"The fuck?"  Dean's hand had fallen from Cas' shoulder.  Shrug or not, he was directing what looked suspiciously like _wrath_ at his favorite angel.  "Lucifer's kid is based on _Sam_?"

Castiel frowned, searching Dean's expression for something he must not have found.  He held Dean's gaze, but he didn't say anything, and Sam couldn't help thinking that was the smart choice.  No matter how mad he was, he didn't want Dean looking at him that way right now.  Or ever.

Not that he hadn't, in the past.  Sam knew what that was like.  He almost felt sorry for Cas, who was probably as bewildered as Dean was angry.  Cas would give it right back, though, and Sam was sure the resulting showdown wouldn't help anything about their current situation.

"Okay," he said aloud.  Probably should have waited to bring that up, then.  "So we'll talk about this later.  Where are we going, and is Gabe gonna be there or not?"

_Gabriel_, he thought immediately, wishing he could take it back as soon as he heard it come out of his mouth.  It was Dean: Dean and his annoying habit of doing whatever the hell he wanted with other people's names.  Everyone except Cas took offense, and Sam had only given up complaining because it didn't do any good.  Didn't mean he wanted to start doing it himself.

"We're not talking about this later," Dean said.  "We're talking about this right now.  Good 'ol Gabe can try not to get himself _smote_ while I freak out at Cas for his incredibly stupid ideas!"

Castiel's gaze flicked to Sam.  "Lucifer is in the courtyard," he said.  "It's likely Gabriel is there too."

"The –"  Sam glanced toward the foyer they'd clearly been heading toward, and Cas nodded.  "Okay," Sam said, catching Jo's eye.  "Let's go."

"Wait, let's go?" she repeated.  "You don't think this is important?  What are we supposed to do, anyway?  So we find the devil; what then?"

"We'll figure it out when we get there," Sam said.  He was already heading for what might be the main door, and he was pretty sure she'd follow.  Jo wasn't scared of Dean by any stretch, but she didn't know what to make of Michael.  Hell, she was still getting used to Cas.

So they ended up in the courtyard for no reason Sam could figure out – why were they doing "mission prep" in sight of the road? – and of course, everyone who wasn't Dean or Cas was there with them.  Lucifer, who still totally freaked him out, and Sam so did not want to know what his flightsuit said.  All three of the children, and this time he got a perfectly good view of the boy's face: definitely familiar.

And finally Gabriel, who was the only one of them who made him feel any better, even if he looked completely lost.  "What kind of mission is that?" he was asking, when Sam and Jo joined their uneasy group.  "That doesn't even make any sense."

"It's not a _mission_."  Lucifer ground the words out with the air of someone who had said the same thing over and over again and still wasn't convinced anyone was listening to him.  "It's a _lesson_.  They're keeping you here until you remember who you are."

"Well, it's gonna be a long time, then," Gabriel remarked.  He wore his nonchalance like a bad attitude.  "Because none of you clowns look familiar, and –"

"Wolfsbane?" Jo blurted out, blinking like she'd finally managed to read the name on his flightsuit.

"Shut up," Sam said with a sigh.  Of course Jo had read the New Mutants.  All he needed was for her to tell Dean, and he'd never hear the end of it.

"And I'm really not sure why I'd want to know any of you anyway," Gabriel finished, giving them a weird look.

"Because they know you," a new voice said.

_Goddess, _Sam thought, even before he saw the owl on her shoulder.  Not one of the ones from the roller rink, and he almost had it when she added, "No one can truly know someone who does not reciprocate.  So we will teach you."

"Okay," Dean's voice interrupted, "Shadowcat is a _girl_?"

"Girl with a dragon," Sam said over his shoulder.  He didn't take his eyes off the goddess, but she vanished anyway and Sam had a feeling Dean was going to regret his timing.  "A small, purple dragon.  That talks."

"I hate you," Dean told him.

"Dean."  Cas sounded way too frustrated for this conversation.  "You like dragons."

"I hate dragons," Dean snapped.  "And I'm not talking to you, so shut it."

"You're talking to me right now," Castiel countered.

"So," Sam said.  "I take it that conversation went well."

"I'm not staying here," Dean said.  "Gabe wake up yet?"

"Rahne's still a little confused," Jo told him, and Sam would have hit her except that it seemed unsporting.  And kind of rude.  "I think she's going to need more than just being told who she is."

"His name isn't Rahne," Sam said, trying not to sigh again.  "And I don't think we can tell him.  I think he has to figure it out on his own."

"Great," Dean said.  "That should happen approximately never.  No offense," he added, giving Gabriel a passing glance.  "You're not exactly the thinker of the family."

"Offense taken!" Gabriel retorted.  "What do you know about my family?"

That was when everything turned white again.

**   
Powers of Observation   
**

They were still outside when the light faded, but it wasn't anything like the courtyard where they'd been.  There were birds, for one thing.  A lot of birds, and a bite in the air that felt like fall and frost.  The ground was hard and everything smelled like hay.  A wall of green straight ahead had a break in it with a brightly lettered sign above that read "corn maze."

Not birds, Sam realized before he could turn around.  Voices.  Happy voices, a crowd that wasn't filled with fear or fury, and how sad was it that he'd forgotten what that sounded like?  There was music, even, synthesized music that sounded suspiciously like – 

"You've gotta be kidding me," Dean's voice said.

Except it wasn't Dean's usual voice and Sam blinked at the lot of them, angels coming into focus around him like a television show he'd forgotten he was watching.  They were all still there.  But their vessels were...

"I believe you offended Minerva with your outburst," Castiel observed.

"No shit," Dean told him.  Her.  Whatever.  "You make a hot chick."

"Why are they all women?" Jo asked, like Sam would know.  Or probably more like Sam was the only one who wouldn't take her head off for asking.  "I mean, not that I'm complaining.  Except about Dean.  I think he's prettier as a man."

It wasn't that they had different vessels, Sam thought, staring at them.  Just that the vessels they'd had before were... not the same.  They'd all transitioned, more or less subtly depending on the angel, from masculine to feminine.  Or male to female, really.  Not just a gender shift – in fact, maybe not a gender shift at all – but a complete biological switch from one sex to the other.

"I'd like to see the corn maze," Maribel said, apparently unfazed by the change.

Lucifer didn't sound any warmer as a woman.  "I told you not to speak."

"Okay, that's it," Sam snapped, all of his helplessness finally converging in one appropriate outlet.  "I'm suing for sole custody if you don't learn something about children right now."

Lucifer's unfriendly gaze seemed to go right through him, and Sam tried not to let the fact that he was staring at a different face change his reaction to the ruler of hell.  "Angels know how to follow orders," Lucifer bit out.  "If they don't, they'll learn."

"Wildfire," Jophiel's voice said suddenly.  "Come here."

The little girl next to Maribel lit up in bright gold and Sam didn't realize her wings had spread until after she was gone.  He was already turning, but it was Jophiel, and she looked the same as always.  She was glaring at Lucifer, her own young angel pressed up against her leg.  "You're not on the babysitting list," she said.

Sam almost laughed.  Because of course that was what mattered to Jophiel: she'd gone to a lot of trouble to get that list made and respected.  Without it, any higher-ranking angel could come along and take one of the children any time they wanted to – no one would stop them, because unfortunately Lucifer was right.  Angels did know how to follow orders.

The list, though.  Jophiel had made Michael sign The List, saying that only those on it were allowed to assume responsibility for his child or hers.  Nobody got on the list without agreeing, and Michael had made it clear that even archangels ignored the list at their peril.

He said he'd talked to Lucifer about it, but Sam hadn't been sure how far that conversation went until now.

"They were alone," Lucifer said, like an explanation was actually required.  "It was me or Gabriel."

Sam's eyes went to Gabriel involuntarily, because he – she – was supposed to be the point of this, after all.  He could only imagine what their apparently amnesiac archangel made of all this.  Turning into a woman didn't seem to bother her any more than the rest of them, so he guessed that was a point for divinity.  She was watching Wildfire and Jophiel cling to each other with a frown, though, and that had to be a point against.

"They're not alone now," Dean was saying.  "Don't tell the girls what to do."

Lucifer sounded exactly as dangerous as Dean did.  "I assume you will offer no interference with Adamel, then?"

"Adamel?" Dean repeated, and oh, Sam knew that tone.  Castiel was going to get slapped if this kept up.  And potentially cut off, except that Dean still insisted they weren't actually sleeping together.  "Look, Adamel is half Sam's, so I think he's got a right to offer some guidance here."

"Have you met Sam?" Maribel asked.  It was enough to draw everyone's attention, though Sam waited until Gabriel looked away from Wildfire to follow suit.  "He knows a lot about humans."

Adamel didn't answer, gaze flicking from her to Lucifer to Sam and then away again.

"You may speak now," Lucifer said, eyeing the rest of them as though daring them to comment.

"No," Adamel said readily enough.  "I haven't met any humans yet."

Sam looked at Dean, which would have been weirder if Dean's expression wasn't exactly the same: _what are you waiting for?_

"Hi," Sam said, crouching down in front of Adamel.  He still towered over the kid, but he held out his hand anyway.  "I'm Sam.  Cas says we're kind of... related."

"Here," Maribel added, when Adamel just looked at him.  She pushed him out of the way and took Sam's hand, shaking it very politely.  "That's how humans greet each other."

Adamel looked up at Lucifer.  "Am I supposed to do that?"

Lucifer's head tilted in a fair approximation of boredom or disinterest.  "You can't use what you don't know."

Adamel must have taken that as permission, because he held out his hand to Sam the same way Maribel had.  He didn't say anything, so Sam asked, "Did you know Lucifer's a rebel?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw shadowy wings spread.  He hoped Dean could stop Lucifer from striking him down if it came to that.  "Lucifer didn't always do what he was told," Sam continued.  "He learned to think for himself, just like humans."

"And some angels," Dean added from behind him.

Instead of protesting, Lucifer just said, "A lot of angels, lately."

"Yeah, well."  Even as a woman, Dean didn't sound impressed.  "Obedience isn't the new rebellion."

"Michael," Jophiel said.  "Why are the children here?"

Sam let go of Adamel's hand but he didn't stand up, turning in his crouch to watch the rest of the group from kid-level.  His eyes went to Gabriel first, and he found her staring right back.  Him.  Her.  Whatever.  Gabriel apparently had some built-in hybrid sensor, so naturally that gaze was drawn to the children.  And Sam.

"Gabe pissed off some goddesses," Dean said.  "I think they sent the kids here to teach him a lesson."

"Why," Jophiel repeated, more deliberately this time.  "Are the children.  Here."

There was a pause.  "Beats me," Dean said.  "Why don't you take them back to the Roadhouse with you?"

"I concur."  Jophiel looked over at Maribel without another word.

Instead of going to her, though, Maribel reached out to take Adamel's hand.  "Ready?" she asked him.  The same thing Cas and Dean asked each other now before they flew away.

Weird, Sam thought.  The kids were actually imprinting.  Like real kids.

"We will leave," Lucifer said, dropping a possessive hand onto Adamel's shoulder.  They left Maribel behind when they disappeared.  She didn't seem upset, but it occurred to Sam to wonder what had stopped Lucifer from leaving before.

"Huh," Gabriel said, as Jophiel vanished with the girls.  "So that was supposed to be educational, was it?"

At the same time, Jo asked, "How come they can come and go while we're stuck here?"

Sam reminded himself not to smile at Gabriel's attitude.  There really wasn't anything that could slow him down.  Funny to see him female, all unknowing, and still kind of a jerk.  Clearly some things transcended environment and circumstance.  He didn't know what that said about him – that he'd still be this confused even without the demon blood? – but ironically, Gabriel's irreverence seemed to be a fundamental part of his identity. 

"I hate to break it to you," Dean was saying, "but you're dead.  Which your mom really isn't happy about, in case you'd forgotten.  You can either stay dead and stay here, or I can heal you up and you can go back.  No jumping in and out."

Jo frowned.  "Is there anything I can do here?"

"No," Dean said bluntly.  "Thanks for helping Sam, but I don't think there's much you can do for Gabriel."

"So, wait," Jo said.  "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Do you know who's running the garrison right now?" Dean countered.  "'Cause my money's on Sachiel.  Jo's not much help right now, her Jo, I mean, and your mom is probably holding a vigil.  Sach is smart and practical, but if anything goes down she has –"  He broke off to count on his fingers, then folded them into a fist.  "No resources to deal with it."

"You want me to go help run the garrison," Jo said.

Dean shrugged.  "Unless you'd rather be stuck in this funhouse."

Sam didn't realize he was staring at Gabriel until he saw the movement as Jo turned.  He caught her eye, and she nodded.  "Okay," she said.  "You know where to find me."

"Say hi to everyone for us," Dean said.  He gave her a wave, and just like that, she was gone.

"Sam," Dean added.  "How 'bout you?"

Sam looked from him and Cas to Gabriel.  He wondered briefly if he could smuggle a cell phone picture out of here and back into the real world.  Probably not.  But if there was any way to do it, it would definitely be worth it.

"Hey," Dean prompted.  "You listening?"

"What?"  Sam glanced back at his brother, looking very much now like his non-existent sister.  "Yeah.  Of course.  I'm here for a reason, Dean.  Just... don't let my anything weird happen to my body, okay?  I'd kind of like it back when this is over."

"Define 'weird,'" Dean said, looking down.

"I'd better not come back and find myself turned into a woman," Sam said.

"Hey," Dean said.  "I could do that, you know.  I'm pretty sure."

"Yeah," Sam agreed.  "And I could also kill you."

"Michael."

Goddess voice, Sam thought.  Palm stem, leopard print... Egyptian, he guessed, but after that he was stuck.

"Seshat," Dean replied.  That was the wary tone that meant Dean thought they were in trouble.  Or more likely, that Gabriel was in trouble.  Sam shifted just enough that he was between the goddess and Dean's archangel brother.  Or sister.  Did angels differentiate the sibling relationship based on anything other than the sex of their vessel?

"Gabriel impersonated someone important to us," Seshat intoned.  "The balance of the universe requires that she forfeit her own identity."

"The balance of the universe?" Dean repeated, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

The face Seshat was wearing softened in something almost like amusement.  "Our sense of justice, then."

"Look," Dean said.  "I get that he tricked you, okay?  It's annoying.  I get it because he tricks us all the time.  That's just what he does."

Seshat might be amused, but she definitely wasn't impressed.  "And this is what we do," she said.  "If you insist upon removing people from the illusion, we will be forced to replace them."

"No humans," Dean said immediately.  Like he knew he wasn't going to win this one.  "And no kids."

Seshat's gaze flicked to him, and Sam straightened instinctively.  "He's human," she said.

In a the same way he might say, _Oh, look, a bug._  Which he kind of understood, but he didn't have to like it.

"He wants to be here," Dean said.  "He and Gabriel, they work together.  It's a thing."

Sam thought he could feel Gabriel looking at him.  Glancing over at... her, he tried not to notice that Gabriel's stupid pout looked a lot less obnoxious on a woman's face.  Because Gabriel might not remember anything, but Sam didn't doubt that an archangel's powers of simple observation were enough to make his life hell.

"No angels under a thousand," Seshat agreed.  "You have whatever time you will afford."

And the world went white.

**   
Free   
**

When the light flashed back into normalcy, the air hadn't changed.  Sam hadn't realized he'd been noticing the air until it was suddenly the same: the noise was louder and he was surrounded by people and motion, but the air still carried the scent of hay.  And cotton candy.  And was that – 

"Fried ice cream," Gabriel's voice said, sounding happier than it had since this whole thing started.  "Want some?"

Sam turned, stepping out of the way of some kid's giant fair prize as he did.  They were on a midway, and Gabriel was in fact offering him fair food.  Which smelled great, and Sam couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten.  Well, he could – Yellowstone – but he couldn't figure out how much it mattered in here.

It seemed more important that Gabriel still looked like a woman.  Sam wanted to put the disorientation down to hunger.  Unfortunately, that brought him right back to the food Gabriel was offering him, and his brain was just going in circles.

"Delicious," Gabriel declared, licking her fingers off.  His – well, hers, really.  "I'm gonna eat yours if you don't," she warned.

Sam took it before he could think too much about it.  Seriously, he had to be hungry.  So what if his body was dead?  They ate in here, and he was convinced it was way past... whatever meal should have come next.  Lunch, maybe.  His sense of time couldn't possibly be relevant to anything by now.

"Ooh, a pickle on a stick."  Gabriel was already on to the next thing, so Sam took the opportunity to look around.  The fried ice cream was really good.  He'd go so far as to say eating it made him feel slightly more relaxed.

What it didn't do was locate anyone other than Gabriel, which he wanted to be nervous about, but still.  Ice cream.

Dean and Castiel should have been here, he thought.  The goddesses' teleportation, or transition, or whatever the hell they were doing, didn't seem to disrupt group arrangements the way the angel struggle had.  Until now.  Except that now he was with Gabriel, which he'd kind of thought the goddesses were trying to avoid.

"Gabriel," he said, tossing the empty dish in the nearest trash can.  She hadn't gotten far, although she was half done with a giant pickle and looked like she was eyeing a cotton candy booth in between bites.  "What are we –"

"I don't think I like Gabriel," Gabriel said, licking up the juice the dribbled down the side of the pickle.  Sam looked away, wondering if one of the goddesses wanted to weigh in on this one.  None appeared.

"You should call me Rahne," Gabriel was saying, and Sam rolled his eyes.

"I'm not calling you Rahne," he said.  "You don't even know who Rahne is."

"She's a shapeshifter," Gabriel said around a mouthful of pickle.  It was liking hanging out with Dean, only she managed to make stuffing her face vaguely charming instead of just really gross.  "I like that."

"Yeah, speaking of that," Sam said.  "Could you change back now?  The girl thing is really... strange."

"What girl thing?" Gabriel asked.  She slurped around the bottom of the pickle, raising her eyebrows at him even as he looked away again.  "Seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"The goddesses turned you into a woman," Sam said with a sigh.  He always worried that the one time Gabriel wasn't playing him, he'd miss it because he was so busy trying not to be played.  "You're not."

"You don't think so?"  Gabriel held her arms out to the sides, pickle in one hand, sticky fingers curling around air on the other.  She studied herself for a long moment, then shrugged.  "Doesn't feel strange."

"Not to you," Sam grumbled.  "What do you think you are, anyway?"

"I think I'm someone who enjoys fair food," Gabriel said, pulling the last bite of her pickle off the stick with a look of pleased satisfaction.  Twirling the empty wooden stick around her fingers, she added, "Time for cotton candy!"

"Gabriel," Sam said.

The stick stopped spinning and she swung around, resting the tip against his chest.  Where she just stared at it like she was remembering something else entirely.  A wooden stake, he thought.  Pressed to her own chest, to her neck, covered with blood and more harmless than he could have imagined at the time.

"Don't call me that," she said at last, flipping the pickle stick into the trash can beside the booth.  It narrowly missed a woman leaning in to pick up her three pickles from across the counter.  She didn't seem to notice.

"It's your name," Sam said.  He supposed it couldn't hurt to try the direct approach.  "You're the archangel Gabriel, and it turns out there are things stronger than you out there.  Being you, you pissed them off.  Too bad they caught up with you, or you might still remember."

"See?" Gabriel said, like that was what she'd been saying all along.  "I don't think you like Gabriel either.  I want to be Jane Doe."

Sam rolled his eyes.  "You can't be Jane Doe.  I know who you are."

"Can I have a nickname?" Gabriel asked.  "How about Gabs?  Or Gabby?  Or Princess Awesome?"

"If I call you Gabby," Sam said, "will you tell me why you have to stay a woman?"  He didn't think he could handle Gabriel in female form much longer.  She was dangerously... not ridiculous looking.

"I'm staying a woman," Gabriel said, "because you look at me more this way."

"I do not!" Sam snapped.  "I don't look at you any way.  At all."

"You're obviously the nice one," Gabriel continued, as though he hadn't said anything, "and the nice one is of course the one I want on my side.  You pay more attention to me when I look like this than you did before, so I'm staying like this.  End of story."

"Wow," Sam said, before he could stop himself.  "You're a manipulative bastard even when you don't know who you are."

"Apparently," Gabriel agreed.  "You wanna make out?  You could get something out of it, at least."

"No!" Sam exclaimed.  "No, Gabriel!  I'm not touching you; I don't care what you look like."

Gabriel shrugged.  "Keep pretending you don't find me attractive, see if I care.  Meantime I'll be over here.  Dissolving the world's best cotton candy on my tongue."

"Where's everyone else?" Sam demanded.

"How should I know?" Gabriel said over her shoulder.  She was actually going to stand in line for the cotton candy.  He couldn't remember ever seeing Gabriel wait for anything.  "Maybe your goddesses put them somewhere not here."

"You did this."  Sam wasn't stupid.  "Seshat zapped everyone away, and you did something to make her miss you.  And me.  This is the same place we were before."

"Well, not exactly the same."  Gabriel smirked back at him.  "We're closer to the food now."

"How can you be hungry?"  Sam ignored the people behind her in line, ignored the cone-wielder when Gabriel asked for one of each kind, and tried not to think about the last time he'd had cotton candy.  "You're not human.  This isn't even real."

"I'm not _hungry,_" she said, like it should be obvious.  "I'm just involved_._"

And maybe that had always been Gabriel's problem, Sam thought.  Wanting to be needed, but never really needing anyone back.  He wouldn't have been able to walk away if he had.  Sam knew that from personal experience.

"Here you go."  Gabriel was standing next to him again, and even if her eyes were barely even with his shoulder those wings were bright above his head.  She had some serious presence, and the offer of cotton candy wasn't enough to diminish it.

Sam opened his mouth to ask why he got the pink one, then changed his mind when he realized he didn't really want to know.  "Thanks," he said instead, because it was automatic and maybe even appropriate.

"You're welcome," Gabriel replied.  "Which ride should we go on first?  I like things that spin really fast."  She did eventually notice Sam staring at her, and she added, "What?  You don't have a weak stomach, do you?"

He tried to remember if Gabriel had ever said "you're welcome" before, even sarcastically.

He couldn't.  So he repeated, "Where are the others?"  Because he was sure he wanted to know that, at least.

"Nowhere as great as this," Gabriel said.  She saw his frown and sighed, like he was out to single-handedly ruin her innocent fun.  "I dunno, probably wherever that Seshat sent them.  Does it matter?  They can obviously get out of it whenever they want to.  I'm the one who's stuck here, so I think I should make the best of it."

"Or you could try to get out yourself," Sam suggested.  "Call me crazy, but that seems like the better choice to me."

"I have you," Gabriel pointed out.  "You can tell me all about myself while we're waiting in line, and I can pretend to listen.  It's a foolproof plan."

"For getting you on the rides," Sam finished.

She smirked.  "Always keep your eye on the goal, Sammy."

He found himself trying to remember if Dean had called him that since they got here, but the cotton candy was sticking to his fingers and she was already heading for the ticket booth and it was just too much.  "Gabriel," he called after her.  She didn't turn.  "Gabriel!"

In his defense, it was a stupid thing.  But it finally occurred to him that she was ignoring him on purpose.  "Gabby," he said with a sigh.  He didn't even bother to raise his voice, but she glanced back at him immediately.  "Why did you call me that."

"Call you what?" she asked.

He tried not to grit his teeth.  "Sammy.  Why did you call me Sammy."

"I didn't," she said, reaching into a pocket that couldn't possibly hold the wallet she pulled out of it.  He wondered why she bothered conjuring money when she could just conjure tickets.  "You said your name was Sam."

She was probably messing with him.  The alternative was that the goddesses had messed up her mind more than he'd thought, and he had no idea what to do about that.  He made a conscious decision to let it go: he wasn't going to worry about her just because she looked like a woman.  She was still every bit as insolent and unfeeling as she was in her regular body.  Not to mention indestructible.  He should stop forgetting the indestructible part.

"Which one first?" Gabriel asked, stepping away from the ticket booth to hand him a strip of tickets.  "I promise not to mock you until it's over.  Probably."

Blatant lie.  On the other hand, Gabriel mocking him would be familiar and somewhat reassuring after all the food-sharing and foreign remarks like "you're welcome."  It was enough to make a guy wonder about possession.

So Sam chose.  To his own surprise, Gabriel not only went along, but saved the mockery for afterwards as promised.  At which point Sam was willing to admit that anything that didn't involve getting turned upside down hardly counted as "spinning."  Not because he cared about the definition one way or the other – he was fairly sure Gabriel was just using it to get whatever she wanted – but because the ride _had _ been remarkably boring, and it had been Gabriel who covered for him when he threw pieces of paper cone at the other riders.

"Funny, that rain," Gabriel remarked, loudly enough for everyone to hear.  "Just came out of nowhere.  On a perfectly sunny day.  What are the odds?"

"I would thank you," Sam said under his breath, "if you hadn't been the one to make me do it in the first place."  It was something of a stretch, but she had totally goaded him into it.

"Oh, Sammy."  Gabriel rolled her eyes, and Sam opened his mouth to call her on it but she just kept going.  "Trust me, if I could just make humans do things, life wouldn't be any fun at all."

"You're an archangel," Sam told her.

"I'm awesome," she interrupted, "and no way would I need to be this great if everyone just did whatever I told them.  Now we're going on my ride."

Gabriel snapped her fingers and the fair sped up all around them, blurring into color and light before it was gone.

**   
Like You Were Never Gone   
**

It wasn't an airport this time, but Sam could already tell he wasn't going to like it.  It wasn't the spinning, or the rush, or the fact that he was pretty sure he'd just ghosted through actual people – fake people, at least.  It wasn't even the fact that now he was really sure the goddesses weren't doing this.  Gabriel had hijacked the last switch somehow, and then done the same to this one.

If this was Gabriel's idea of a "ride," Sam wanted off.  It wouldn't mean Gabriel's death this time, right?  Just being stuck in this stupid dreamscape until he learned his lesson?  Sam wasn't against that.

_Saint Michael the archangel,_ he thought.  _Defend us in battle, and be our defense –_

"Sam!"  Dean appeared, just blinked into existence in the yard next to him, and Sam let out an unsteady breath in relief.  He'd already tried summoning garrison angels in here.  Praying to them was a whole level up, but if it worked, he wasn't going to complain.

"What the fuck," Dean added, taking in the street and the house and the giant tree all at once.  "I feel like I've been messing with the charm bracelet again."

"That's not all," Sam said.  He felt better knowing Dean was here.  Actual Dean, wings and all, and when he'd truly accepted that Dean and Michael were the same person he had no idea.  "Check out the window."

Dean swung around in time to see their mom wave through the kitchen window at them.  Dean, to Sam's surprise, waved back before she disappeared.  "Dean," Sam hissed.  "You said it wasn't real."

"No reason to be rude," Dean muttered.  "What are you doing here, anyway?  We've got Hecate breathing down our necks because she thinks we're hiding –"  He broke off.  "Oh no.  No no no, what's... hey!  Get away from her!"

Gabriel, still in her female form, was leaning over the fence to scoop Maribel out of the yard.  Sam was positive Dean's kid hadn't been there before, though he would admit he'd been trying to ignore Gabriel as much as possible.  Maribel's wings flared as she settled on Gabriel's shoulders.  Balancing, Sam figured.  Kind of cute.

"Hello!" Mary's voice called, and he froze.  "Everyone's early today!"

Gabriel was walking along the fence toward them, Maribel perfectly calm on her shoulders.  Dean looked torn between snatching her away and staring at their mom, and Sam knew the feeling.  At least he'd seen this illusion before.  Why Gabriel insisted on bringing his parents back, Sam had no idea, but with Dean beside him it didn't seem quite as bad as before.

"Dean," Castiel's voice said urgently.  "Maribel is –"

"Here," Dean finished for him.

"I see," Castiel said, at almost the same time.  "Did you do this?"

"I'm not that much of a jerk, Cas."

"Hi, Castiel," Mary said, warm and welcoming and close enough that she'd better not be evil or they were all in serious trouble.  "It's good to see you again.  And Sam, this must be Gabby?"

Gabriel beamed over top of Maribel's crossed ankles, and Sam sighed.  "Yeah," he said, because it was the easiest way out.  "Yeah, this is Gabby."

"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Winchester."  Gabriel had two whole seconds of pretending to be a real girl, and it was long enough for Sam to catch Dean's _wtf_ expression.  Sam just rolled his eyes, because what could he do?

Mary was talking to Maribel now, who sounded way more suspicious than Gabriel did, mostly by virtue of the fact that she wasn't actually a four-year-old child and had never been told she should act like one.  Dean and Castiel were both watching the interaction like hawks, and Sam couldn't tell if they were talking to each other while they did it or not.  He could tell that Gabriel was watching him_._

Sam tried to give Gabriel a look that conveyed, _Amnesia is no excuse_ and also _I would so get Dean to smite you if my mom wasn't watching._  He suspected it just came across as annoyed.  He did overhear Dean murmur, "Tell Hecate to call off her dogs," and that was enough to distract him for a moment.

Unfortunately, it was also enough to get Mary's attention, even if she didn't seem to hear what they'd said.  She spoke before Sam could ask.  "John isn't home yet," she said, "but there's cheese and crackers inside, if you boys would like to help me put them out.  Gabby, Cas, can we get you anything to drink?"

Sam didn't recognize it at first, ritualistic though it sounded.  Like a conversation repeated a dozen times before, like something they did every weekend... like some kind of family routine.  He and Dean had them.  Hell, he and Dean and Dad had had them, it was just that they'd tended more toward whose bag went in the car first than who served whom drinks.

Dinner.  This was what a family dinner was like.

"I'll have a soda," Gabriel was saying.  "What about you, kiddo?"  She bounced Maribel once, mostly-invisible archangel wings holding the girl in place.  "You want some soda?"

Castiel was looking to Dean for his cue.  Sam looked from Gabriel to Dean, saw him swallow.  Dean didn't want to be here anymore than Sam did.  Dean was the one who'd stabbed himself free of a djinn's fantasy world on nothing but stubbornness and a refusal to submit.  How was this any different?

"You, uh..."  Dean cleared his throat, but his voice was still rough.  "You want a beer, Cas?"

Sam stared at him.  Dean threw him an agonized look that said _I'm sorry_ plain as day, and Sam drew in a deep breath.  Okay.  Okay, so this was the one they were playing along with.  He didn't like it, but Dean knew what he was doing.  More often than not.  Sixty percent of the time.  Fifty-five, at least.

"That would be acceptable," Castiel agreed, like he wasn't surprised at all.  "Perhaps Maribel would like visit the tire swing."

Sam looked at him in surprise – how did he even know about that? – but Gabriel was way ahead of him.  "Sounds great," she agreed.  "What do you say, kid?"

"You do not know where it is," Castiel said.  "I don't believe you would enjoy the walk, Gabby.  I will take Maribel."

"Oh, I'd enjoy it," Gabriel replied.  She had all the human ease Castiel had never learned to fake.  "I'd enjoy it a lot."

Maribel didn't move, but Sam saw a little wisp of a wing glow against Gabriel's for a minute.  "I'd like to go with Father, please," she said.  Sam mentally revised his thoughts on her behavior.  Calling Dean and Cas "Daddy" and "Father," even if it was just in mimicry of them, was one of the most human things she did.

"Hey," Sam said before he could stop himself.  "We have ice cream.  We could make root beer floats."

He had no idea whether that was true or not, and he didn't want to think about why he'd said it.  But the corner of Gabriel's mouth quirked, and she helped Maribel down off of her shoulders without another word.  As she walked over to Castiel, she asked, "What's a root beer float?"

Castiel, with unflinching honesty, replied, "I don't know."

Sam saw Dean roll his eyes.  "They'll be waiting for you when you get back," he said, like he couldn't believe he had a family that didn't know what to do with soda and ice cream.  "You'll love 'em."

"I have no doubt," Castiel agreed.

"Sickening," Gabriel muttered under her breath.

Sam shot her a warning look, but Mary was still smiling after Maribel and Cas.  "Dean," she said, folding her arms as she watched them go.  "Should I be worried that your angel knows beer but not root beer floats?"

"Don't tell me you're surprised," Gabriel said.

Dean was staring at their mom and Sam was staring at him when he asked, "You know he's an angel?"

Mary glanced from one of them to the other.  "You told me he was when you met him," she said.  She looked caught between amused and bewildered, probably half-convinced they were playing a joke on her.

It was weird how easy it was to read expressions on someone he couldn't even remember, Sam thought.

"Right," Dean said.  "Of course."  He paused, then added, "How did I meet him?"

"In hell," she said.  "He pulled you out."

Sam and Dean exchanged glances.  Dean was already going for his gun when she added, "Of the Hell Creek spillway?  Last year, at the car show in Michigan?  I do remember these things, Dean.  No more drinking and driving.  You promised."

"Yeah," Dean said awkwardly, patting his coat back into place like he'd just noticed it was there.  "No, that's... that's real dangerous.  Not doing that anymore."

"Well, I'm sure Castiel keeps a closer eye on you than I ever could," she said.  "Come inside and tell me how Maribel's doing.  Gabby, what kind of soda would you like?"

Dean caught Sam's arm just before he would have followed them, but it didn't stop Sam from overhearing Gabriel's reply.  "Oh, whatever you have is fine.  I like anything sweet."

Sam closed his eyes briefly and wondered how this was his life.

"Why is he still a girl?" Dean wanted to know.  "And where have you been?  We looked, but I couldn't hear either of you until you started praying."

"Yeah, sorry about that."  Sam opened his eyes, but Dean didn't look pissed.  At least, not at him.  "I think Gabriel's doing it.  I think he got the drop on the goddesses somehow and snuck away."

"With you," Dean said.

Sam shrugged uncomfortably.  "I guess.  I asked him what was going on and he just said if he's stuck here, he's going to enjoy it."

"As a woman," Dean said.

"Yeah, I don't know," Sam muttered.  "He says it doesn't seem strange, so he just... can't be bothered to change back.  Or something."

"Whatever," Dean said.  "Like I care.  What worries me is that he got Maribel here, right out from under Jophiel's nose, and if he can reach outside the illusion like that then I don't know what's keeping him here."

Sam frowned.  "You don't think that was the goddesses?"

"No."  Dean didn't hesitate.  "If they're gonna lie, it's not gonna be about the kids."

"So what does that mean?"  Gabriel was trapped.  The rest of them could leave whenever they wanted – except Sam.  And Sam was the only one Gabriel had taken with him.  "If he can reach out of this thing, but you can't reach in... you said you couldn't find me, right?"

"Yeah," Dean said grimly.  "He effectively kidnapped you.  I'm waking you up right now."

"Wait –"  Sam glanced back at the house, but Gabriel was nowhere to be seen.  "What about –"

"Cas and Maribel are already gone," Dean said.  "He's not gonna die, Sam.  I know you want to stay and redeem him, or whatever, but if he's gonna mess with you and Maribel then we're done here.  He's not playing by anyone's rules but his own."

"He doesn't even remember," Sam protested.  "He has no idea what he's doing."

"Which makes him more dangerous," Dean said.  "Not less.  Look, I don't like this any more than you do, but there's a line and he crossed it."

Sam had opened his mouth to argue again before he realized what he was doing.  Who he was defending.  He trusted Gabriel, mostly, when he was _Gabriel._  When he had a family of archangels to answer to, and one of them happened to be Sam's brother.  He didn't trust the trickster, and he didn't trust whatever Gabriel was now.  Looking sort of cute and cheeky in a borrowed body was nothing to base a friendship on, and the fact that Sam had forgotten that, even for a few seconds, meant that he should get out of here.  Right now.

"Yeah," he said aloud.  "Okay.  You're right."

Dean eyed him suspiciously.  "I am?"

"Yo, Sammy!"

Gabriel's unfortunately feminine voice almost made him turn, but he managed to keep his gaze on Dean while he nodded.  He didn't want to see that expression when he disappeared anyway.  Dean lifted two fingers in a move so reminiscent of Cas that Sam had to smile.

Everything blurred into nothing, and Sam opened his eyes.

**   
The Law Won   
**

"I don't think I like your brother," Gabriel said.

He wasn't at the Roadhouse.  Not that he'd expected to be, not if that was actually Gabriel talking to him right now.  But Dean was _Michael._  If Dean couldn't get him out of Gabriel's stupid illusion, then he was in trouble.

"He's your brother too," Sam said carefully, turning to size up his captor.

Gabriel was still hiding behind a troublingly pretty facade.  Soft brown ponytail and wicked eyes and why did Sam _care_, damn it.  Why was he even looking?

How could he not look, when this was the guy he had to trust with his life?

"So you say," Gabriel replied.  "He seems to care more about you than he does about me."

"That's because you're being a jerk," Sam told her.  Him.  Damn it.  Angel or not, Gabriel was "him" in his mind, but he couldn't look at a woman and not think "her."

"Yeah, I hear that's typical of me," Gabriel said.  "So why did you ask to stay?"

"I didn't," Sam snapped.  "I asked Dean to get me out of here, which I'm guessing you overheard, since I'm here now instead of back at the Roadhouse."

Everything around him wavered, and just like that, it _was_ the Roadhouse.  A completely empty Roadhouse, with the exception of him and Gabriel, who took a step back and held her hands out to the sides.  "Voila," she said.  "Back at the Roadhouse."

"We're not," Sam said.  "This isn't real, Gabriel.  I want out."

"You didn't want out before," Gabriel said, frowning.

"That's because I thought you were listening to me," Sam countered.  "You're obviously not.  You're lying through your teeth, which I should have expected, and now you're holding me prisoner."

"I'm a prisoner!" Gabriel protested, like that was the only part that mattered.  "Maybe I want some company!"

"Then ask," Sam shot back.  "It's not hard, Gabriel.  You shouldn't have to trick people into doing what you want."

Gabriel sighed, all drama and theatrics.  She looked more like she was pouting than pleading when she said, "Stay with me."

"No," Sam said.

Gabriel's eyes narrowed, and the danger there was very familiar.  New face, old threat.  This was someone who could rewrite his life until he didn't know what was true and what was a lie.  "Why not?"

"Because I don't think you'll really let me go," Sam told her.  "You asking doesn't mean anything if I don't really have a choice."

Gabriel rolled her eyes.  "Humans," she complained, lifting her right hand.  "You'd think Dad had nothing better to do than listen to you whine.  Blah blah blah, free choice, but at the end of the day, you always want us to prove something.  It's disgusting."

_Snap._

Sam sucked in a sharp breath.  He felt it rattle in his lungs and he sat up, gasping again and fisting his hands like he could hold on to the air.  _The faker,_ he thought, staring wildly around his room at the Roadhouse.  The chair had been hauled over to his bed and Dean was slumped against its back, to all appearances deeply asleep.

Sam's hands went to his chest first.  Sense memory, maybe, but it twinged and he thought he felt the skin burn under his fingers.  Yanking his shirt up, he found himself whole and unscarred.  "Dean," he rasped, and okay, this was better than last time but it still wasn't fun.  If only the alternative to coming back from the dead wasn't so... final.

Dean didn't move until Sam leaned over and closed his fingers around Dean's wrist.  "Dean," he said again, but Dean's eyes were already open.  For just a second, they flashed white.

"Hey –"  Dean was up before he could say anything else, fingers fumbling with Sam's, and he sounded completely human as he yelled for Cas.  "You okay?" he added, just before the curtains fluttered and Castiel was suddenly standing there in front of the window.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"He's back," Dean said at the same time, which Sam thought was pretty obvious but Castiel nodded like he'd imparted vital information.  "I lost you," Dean told him.  "I had you and then you were gone.  What happened?"

Sam almost didn't answer, knowing as he did so that he might as well throw Gabriel out of the garrison himself.  But he couldn't keep it a secret, and why should he?  Gabriel had known what he was doing.

"Gabriel must have heard us talking," Sam said.  "He snatched me before you could, back at the house."

Dean's hand was on his shoulder now.  It squeezed hard, but his voice was even when he asked, "Did he give you a choice?"

Sam hesitated.  He was alive, after all.  But Dean wasn't really asking if he'd had a choice – he was asking if Sam trusted Gabriel.  The answer to that, now, was pretty clear.

"No," Sam said.  "He didn't."

Dean turned to Castiel.  "I want him off the garrison roster," he said.  "Gabriel doesn't set foot in the Roadhouse without divine intervention."

"Understood," Castiel said.  Like it was that easy.  Like whatever Dean decided was what they would do, and whatever Sam wanted was what Dean would decide.  "Who shares Sam's leadership in his place?"

"Me," Dean said firmly.  "We don't need Gabriel now that I've got my grace back."

"He's not as messed up as those goddesses wanted him to be," Sam blurted out.  "He remembers everything.  I think he was just screwing with them."  _With us,_ he added silently.  He probably didn't have to say it aloud.

"What else is new," Dean grumbled.  He sounded more annoyed than angry, and Sam wondered if that was his weird archangel perspective kicking in.  There had been a time when Dean hated Gabriel – when he actively wanted him dead – but lately, Gabriel seemed to fall into the category of "blood."  Or whatever passed for it with archangels, since Sam assumed that was Michael's influence.  Dean bitched and moaned, both at him and about him, but as soon as Gabriel was threatened, Dean had been in there swinging.

As soon as they'd thought he was threatened, anyway.  The goddesses had apparently underestimated their former imposter.  Sam caught himself hoping that Gabriel wasn't going to get in trouble for being alone, and he rolled his eyes at himself.  Like Gabriel was even there anymore.  He'd pulled Maribel in, he'd sent Sam out.  Like Dean said, there couldn't be anything keeping him there.

"You hungry?" Dean was asking.  "It was longer in there than it was out here, and I don't remember getting any meals."

"I could eat," Sam agreed.  Probably better not to explain the circumstances under which he'd eaten.  If he'd eaten.  He still wasn't sure how it all translated, but he figured being dead had to be hard on the metabolism.

"Great."  Dean stood up, offering him a hand, and Sam looked at it in surprise. He took it, sure, but he was sitting on a bed.  It wasn't like he needed to be hauled up off the floor or anything.

On top of that, Dean clapped him on the shoulder on the way out of the room, which made Sam decide that all the books were wrong.  Michael was definitely the affectionate archangel.  He'd have to find a way to work that into conversation.  Unfortunately, downstairs it was breakfast if it was anything, and angels were in and out every five seconds: either coming back from sentry duty or heading out, lining up for old assignments or, rarely, requesting new ones.

Dean seemed to keep it all straight in a way Sam wasn't able to.  He did notice, though, that no one asked for Gabriel, and he had to wonder at that.  Out of the twenty-plus angels stationed at the Roadhouse garrison, no one so much as mentioned their former leader.

"How come no one's asking about Gabriel?" he said under his breath, when there weren't any other angels he could see heading for their table.  "Is he blacklisted already, or what?"

"He's not part of the garrison," Dean said, stabbing the edge of an early pancake with unnecessary force.  Unnecessary force for a human, anyway.  For an angel it was probably very restrained.  "No reason for anyone to care."

Angel news traveled fast.  Sam wondered if not everyone was surprised: Gabriel had been straddling the edge of a lot of people's good opinion lately.  Where "lately" equalled "forever," it seemed.

Dean caught him yawning before he'd even finished his coffee.  They proceeded to have one of the weirdest fights Sam could remember about whether or not being dead counted as sleeping.  The last thing Sam wanted to do after waking up from a dream world was go back to sleep, but Dean seemed to think he needed it.  Sam finally told him that if he didn't shut the hell up he'd pull rank as garrison leader.

This led to an entirely different fight about seniority, which Dean took less seriously and Sam found a lot more entertaining.  By the time they'd agreed on absolutely nothing, the caffeine had started to kick in and Sam managed to look alert enough that Dean let the lack of actual sleep go.  Sam let the mother henning go in turn because he figured it had to be disturbing to see your brother get stabbed in the chest with an angel sword.

It wasn't until he went back upstairs to change that he started to wonder if it was more than that.  His room wasn't empty, and it wasn't Gabriel inside waiting for him.

Or rather, it was Gabriel, but it was Gabriel the way she'd appeared in the goddesses' dreamscape.  Snappy and feminine and she put a finger to her lips the moment he opened his mouth.  He glared at her, but he closed the door behind him before he asked, "What are you doing here?  Is this even real?"

She rolled her eyes.  "Of course it's real.  You think I'd make up a whole fantasy about your brother being a dick?"

"He fired you," Sam said.  "You're not even supposed to be here."

"Oh, because Michael's edicts mean so much to me," she scoffed, and Sam narrowed his eyes.

"Yes," he realized, studying that familiar combination of carelessness and bored amusement.  _If I could just make humans do things, life wouldn't be any fun at all._  It was all a game to Gabriel, and the game was manipulation.  "Yes, I do think you'd make up something like this."

Sam had to hand it to her: she looked genuinely taken aback.  "Why would I fire myself?" Gabriel wanted to know.

"Why would you pretend not to remember anything?" Sam countered.  "Because you think it's funny to watch us trip over ourselves.  Because you like making us think things that aren't true.  Because you're a trickster and it's what you _do,_ Gabriel."

Gabriel held up one hand and ticked off points one at a time.  "First off," she said, "it _is_ funny.

"Second," she continued, moving on to the next finger, "it's less 'you' in a plural sense and more 'you' in the singular.  You're really quite charming when you're defending me, Sammy boy.

"Finally," she said, before he could to more than glare, "if I was actually a trickster, those goddess probably wouldn't be so mad at me.  No sense of humor, really.  It's terrible.  Lucky I know how to keep a low profile, or they'd be crawling all over this place."

"I think you'll find we do have a sense of humor," another woman's voice remarked.  "Because the other choice would be to destroy you where you stand."

Sam was pretty sure he didn't want to know.  He looked anyway.

"Erzulie," Gabriel said from behind him.  "It's always such a treat."

"You're lucky your father's a friend," she replied.  The gold heart around her neck glinted in the room's uneven light.  "Unfortunately for you, Loki is one of ours."

"Oh, get over it already!" Gabriel complained.  "It was one little party, and the invitation wasn't exactly specific!"

"Party?" Sam repeated.  Also, deities could breach angel garrisons.  Good to know.

"Perhaps a reminder," the goddess said.

Sam had a moment to reflect, before the Roadhouse disappeared again, that he really should try harder not to piss off other people's deities.

**   
Some Kind of Freedom   
**

There was a lot of screaming.  Sam's first thought was _mob_, except that there was too much food and people in bright yellow shirts labeled "security" and he thought he was wearing a headset again.  At least it wasn't on – or the voice he was hearing seemed to be coming from farther away than that.  He didn't even recognize Cas' tone at first.

"You are not going back out there!"

"It's one fucking song, Cas!"  Dean, on the other hand, sounded exactly like he always did when he was going to get his way and heaven help anyone who tried to stop him.  "Put me out there and the crowd stays where it is!  You'll have time to get the rest of the band on the bus before everyone goes crazy!"

"Do death threats mean nothing to you?" Castiel demanded.  "You think they'll see you being stupid and feel sorry for your incompetence?  You aren't going anywhere without a vest and an armed guard!"

"We have metal detectors at the doors!" Dean shouted.  "There aren't any guns out there!  I'm not wearing a vest, and thanks to you, I already _have_ an armed guard!"

"It's not enough!"

Castiel was afraid, Sam realized.  That was what made him sound different.  Sam had only heard it once before, though Ellen and Anna had both tried to describe it to him after other, similar incidents.  When Tessa showed up looking for Dean.  When Raphael and Zachariah took him.  When the archangels took him again, and no one was sure he was coming back.

Dean scared Castiel: not with threats, but with risks.

"It's important," Dean hissed.  "If we're not allowed to talk about the stupid shit that's going on, what kind of freedom is that?  You don't kill someone for questioning, Cas.  And we can't be afraid."

Something nudged Sam's elbow, and he looked away from them for two seconds.  Long enough to see Gabriel standing beside him, neat brown ponytail curling at the end.  Strawberry in one hand, flak jacket in the other.  "Vest?" she said, offering it to him.

She took a bite of the strawberry she was holding while he watched.  She wasn't wearing a vest.  He glanced around at the rest of the group, the little band he remembered from his brief encounter with the stage what felt like days ago now.  Jo, and Ash, and... Adam.  Adam was here.  Dead family just followed them wherever they went.

"We can be afraid," Castiel was saying.  "_I _can be afraid, and I'm afraid for you, and it's what keeps you alive.  You're remarkably little help when it comes to self-preservation!"

"We can't _act_ afraid," Dean amended.  "We can say whatever we want; it's a free country.  The second we start acting like it isn't, like everyone needs to shut the hell up for the sake of the greater good or risk taking a bullet in the back from some fucking fanatic?  That's when this becomes a military state.  That's not the world I'm gonna live in, Cas."

The vest bumped Sam's arm again, and he pushed it away.  "No," he said quietly.  He didn't know what Gabriel was doing, but he knew Gabriel was doing it.  This wasn't the goddesses' reality any more than the fair had been.  And these weren't the real Dean and Cas, but they meant something.  They meant something that Gabriel was trying to say, and he thought Sam would listen to them.

He saw Dean glance at him, mouth quirking in a half-smile.

It was a little creepy, and Sam looked down at Gabriel without thinking.  Still a she.  The vest was gone, but she was holding another strawberry, sucking on it like it was a lollipop.  She pulled it out of her mouth long enough to drawl, "Sucks to be a celebrity, huh?"

"If you martyr yourself for the sake of setting a good example," Castiel said, "I will never forgive you."

It was clear he was talking to Dean.  It was also clear that Dean had won, because he reached forward and grabbed a fistful of Castiel's t-shirt.  The same "BOSS" shirt he had worn before.  Thin enough that Sam wasn't sure how much abuse it could take, but it didn't tear when Dean stepped closer and tugged at the same time.  "Thanks, babe," he murmured, pressing a surprisingly gentle kiss to Castiel's mouth.

"Don't go near the edge of the stage," Cas mumbled.  "Don't touch anyone.  Don't let anyone up with you.  Don't pick up anything that's thrown at you.  Don't –"

Dean shoved him away with a laugh, a little reckless, but fond.  "I know.  I know; I'm not stupid.  Get everyone else on the bus."

"Who are you protecting?" Sam blurted out.  He'd meant the question for Gabriel, but somehow it was Dean who replied.

With an impatience that was exactly like Dean, all the way through the stage clothes and makeup, he said, "My family, bitch.  Now get the hell out of here."

Sam gaped at him, too startled to snap "jerk" in return.  He didn't know whether he should be staring at Dean or Gabriel, which was weird and disconcerting but not the creepiest thing he'd seen.  He still hadn't said anything when Castiel started to gather them all up, herding them together and issuing instructions that didn't come to them over his headset.

"Pomegranate?" Gabriel's voice asked at his side.

Sam looked down, saw her tossing the unbitten fruit in her left hand.  "Has it ever occurred to you to just say stuff?" he asked.  He was pretty sure the pomegranate question was like the red pill/blue pill choice in the matrix.  He just wasn't sure which choice was the red pill.  He guessed it depended on how Gabriel defined "home."

"I say stuff all the time," Gabriel protested.  "It's not my fault no one listens."

Sam frowned, because if he was going to consider the rest of it...

Gabriel.  The herald of God.  The voice of the prophets.  The only angel to abandon heaven without falling, and the last to fall in line with anything his brothers wanted.  He was, according to his grace, the most obedient angel ever to walk the earth.  And according to his attitude, he couldn't take an order to save his life.

"Ellen," Castiel was saying, and Sam looked around in surprise.  Ellen _was_ wearing a vest, along with a radio and a tilt of her shoulders that indicated a concealed weapon.  Her badge looked worn and she was clearly at ease – taking over the shepherding of the band while Castiel turned back to follow Dean.

Sam didn't hear any protests, but then, yellow shirts had closed in around them and he couldn't hear much of anything.  Maybe the voices of Jo and Adam over his headset.  The distant roar of the crowd, growing fainter but still an ever-present rumble that suddenly swelled – he assumed that was Dean stepping back onto the stage – and Gabriel.  Of course he heard Gabriel, because she had to talk right in his ear.

"You're welcome," she was saying.  "Erzulie wanted to send us back to Mt. Olympus.  So not as much fun.  The food was way worse, for one thing, and the clothes?  Wow.  You don't even want to know."

"Erzulie and Mt. Olympus never intersect in ancient mythology," Sam muttered.  He didn't know why he was even answering: either what she was saying wasn't what she meant, and he was responding to the wrong thing, or what she was saying had no meaning at all and the bait was only there to distract him.

"Neither do Gabriel and Loki," she remarked, and he wished he could grab her arm to stop her from being swept ahead of him.  He didn't know how she was staying so close in the press of security, but it felt fleeting and out of control.  Like she could vanish at any moment.

"Have you even met Loki?" he demanded.  "Do you have any clue who you're impersonating?"

"Everyone knows Loki," Gabriel scoffed.  "And I didn't impersonate him, I just took over his ceremonial role while he was busy with other things.  He should thank me.  Most archangels would have had better things to do."

"You took over his role at a party," Sam said.  "To which he was invited, but I'm guessing he mysteriously never showed up."

Gabriel shrugged.  "You know gods.  They're so capricious."

Sam saw the door coming, but he didn't realize it was _the_ door.  Even the noise from the other side didn't warn him before he felt the hand of security at his back and an arm flung up in his face, mostly to shield his eyes from the flash of cameras.  Which made no sense; holy fuck, what kind of band _were_ they?  They had cameras and press and what had to be random fans staking out the back door _during the show_?

"Keep moving," he heard an unfamiliar voice say, close and confident over his headset.  Why was he still wearing a headset?  He'd thought they were stage radios, but they were obviously tuned to the same frequency as security, and why was no one else freaking out over this?

"Keep your head down," the voice advised.  All in all, Sam thought it was stupid advice, given that he was six and a half feet tall.  Keeping his head down would just put him at eye level with the cameras.  But he saw an arm snake past one of the guards, making him yank Gabriel away from it without thinking, and after that he kept his head down just to keep an eye on all of them.

The bus area had been cordoned off, security fortified by typical concert barricades, but Sam couldn't ignore the fact that guards surrounded them all the way to the bus itself.  They got door-to-door service, and he could only imagine what they'd been saying that could have prompted death threats.  It didn't even occur to him that Gabriel probably wasn't supposed to be with them until after they'd all been swept onto the bus together.

"Wow," Jo said, sliding onto the couch with the sort of graceless ease that no one wearing something that tight should have.  "We didn't even have to sign autographs.  Do you think the people who won the meet 'n greet are gonna be disappointed?"

"I think the more important question is, will Dean say anything during the encore to stir up the crazies more," Adam said, collapsing beside her.  He didn't sound like he thought it was a question at all.

"Hey," Ash said.  He was squinting at Gabriel like he hadn't realized she was with them.  "You're on the bus again."

"Could be worse," Gabriel said over her shoulder.  She was rifling through the fridge already, which just figured.  "I could be on Mt. Olympus."

"Yeah," Ash agreed.  "I hear their buses suck."

"So," Gabriel added, closing the door and handing Sam a bottle of something red.  "You gonna show me around?"

Sam knew better than to take the bottle.  "Why would I do that?"

"Show her your bunk, man," Ash said.  "We don't care."

"Yeah, you know Dean and Cas are gonna make out after the last song anyway," Jo added.  "Got plenty of time."

"Why am I hearing this?" Adam wanted to know.  "I mean, really.  Why is this my life?"

It was that, more than anything, that made Sam drag Gabriel away from them.  Because he was going to say something stupid to Adam if he was around him much longer.  He didn't know what would come out of his mouth, and he'd rather keep it that way.  For his own peace of mind more than any sense of respect for a fake person he didn't really know.

"Okay," he said, when the sliding door closed behind them at the back of the bus.  "What are we doing here?"

Gabriel popped the top on her bottle with a thumb while offering the other one to him a second time.  "Have a drink, Sammy."

"Stop calling me that," he snapped.  "I told you I wanted out."

"And Erzulie had other ideas," Gabriel said with a shrug.  She set the bottle down when he refused it again and took a swallow of her own.  "It's not my fault you're always with me when they show up."

"Yeah, I think it is."  Sam glared at her.  "Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it without all this –"  He waved a hand at the bunks and the bus and the ridiculous stage clothes.  "Just tell me and let me go."

"I'm trying," she said sharply.  "I don't know if you've noticed, but everyone on the entire planet is hunting me right now.  For what I happen to consider really stupid reasons, but it's not like they asked me before they turned my life into a rerun of Quantum Leap.

"'Hey, Gabriel,'" she mimicked, "'are you going to kill Castiel's cute little angel babies?'  Hello!  Archangel with super-awesome powers against little bits of fluff with wings!  If I was going to kill them they'd be so many bloody smears on the side of the road right now, so _no_.  Let's logically assume the answer is no and move the fuck on.

"'Hey, Gabriel,'" she continued.  "'Are you sorry for impersonating our jackass brother at the last big reunion?'  No!  And you know why?  Because he's a trickster!  He probably thought it was the most hilarious trick ever!  Putting one over on his divine relations was like the best tribute I could pay, so they're _welcome._"

"'Hey, Gabriel,'" she added, "'can you send Sam Winchester back to his garrison of the damned so he can tell all the good little soldiers to ignore Daddy's broken trumpet?'  Yes.  Yes, I can, but why would I want to when you're the only person other than Charles Carver who actually listens to what I say!"

Sam narrowed his eyes.  He was tired of being played, and if she started crying he was going to throw the damn bottle at her.  "We listen, Gabriel," he told her.  "We just don't believe you.  Every other word that comes out of your mouth is a lie, so after a while we have to ask: what's the point?"

"Oh, I'm sorry if God's truth is hard on your demon ears," she retorted.  "But my brothers and sisters have zero excuse.  Tell them to go fuck themselves and don't bother to write.  Oh, right.  They won't."

Just like that, Sam was standing in his room at the Roadhouse like he'd never left.

Alone.

**   
Messenger Without a Message   
**

He wasn't tired.  He just sat down on his bed because he didn't feel like standing anymore, and the bed was closer than the chair.  If he closed his eyes, well.  It wasn't like there was anything to see.

"Samuel Winchester."

He thought about looking.  He didn't know why he didn't, really.  Maybe he knew who it was, and what they wanted, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it one way or another.  Maybe he just didn't care anymore.

Maybe he knew, now, what could make Dean want to just lie down and stop fighting.

"Gabriel accords you a respect he shows to no one else," the voice continued.  Of course it didn't care what he wanted, or whether he was even listening or not.  "If he will apologize to you for those he betrayed as Loki, we will consider his debt to us paid in full."

There were so many things there that he didn't want to know.  He didn't want to talk about any of them.  He was reluctant to tell a goddess he didn't care, even if it was true.  Even if all he really wanted was to put his back to the bed and pretend he wasn't alone for a few minutes.

"No," Sam said, just to see what would happen.  "I'm done with Gabriel."

Of course she would be the first one who listened to him.

"Very well," the voice replied, and his eyes snapped open.

He recognized the flame around her neck.  He wondered what justice there was for those who gave up, for the ones who ran away, for the people who just stopped trying.  "I didn't mean that," he said.  He was afraid he was about to find out.  "I didn't think you'd listen."

Maybe he was tired, if he'd let that slip out.  He should know enough to watch what he said around supernatural beings.  It wasn't like he hadn't had practice.

"That's a sentiment I believe Gabriel understands," the goddess remarked.  Was that a hint of humor in her voice?

Sam sighed, because yeah.  Probably should have skipped the temper tantrum.  "Send me back," he said, resigned.  "I'll get him to apologize."

"He's not your responsibility, Samuel Winchester."

Since when did goddesses care, he wondered?  She was looking at him like humans mattered, like they had half a brain.  Like his choice meant more to her than it did to Gabriel.

"Someone should be," he muttered.

"Everyone your brother doesn't care about isn't automatically your problem," she said.  "You don't have to clean up after him."

He snorted.  "Like he needs me to.  He's got all of heaven for that."

"Michael's heaven has a lot of cracks," she said.  "You know that as well as he does.  Doesn't mean you have to patch them all."

Sam stared at her.  "Um, no offense," he began, and he was aware even as he said it that those words probably shouldn't be part of a conversation with a goddess.  "But what do you care?"

"I only care a little bit," she told him.  "But that's about how much of my attention this conversation is taking up, so.  You could always go on vacation."

He was trying to figure out if those two things were in any way related when she added, "Of course, Gabriel would probably follow you.  Which might get him out of our hair, but I doubt it would get Michael out of yours."

He was officially too tired for this.  "Gabriel wouldn't even notice I was gone.  And I'm not trying to get away from Dean."  He hoped that covered the basics.

"If I were to design a messenger," she said, "she would need two things.  A message, and an audience."

"Okay," Sam said.  He assumed he was supposed to agree, and that was all he had.

She tilted her head.  "Do you still want to go to Gabriel?"

"Yeah."  He had to, didn't he?

He was standing in an open field without any warning at all.  He was kind of getting used to that, though.  There was something roaring behind him, and he turned around reluctantly.

Gabriel flipped up her goggles and grinned at him.  "I like this idea," she said.  "Coming?"

Sam looked up – and up, and even farther up than that.  The balloon was almost completely inflated, tremendous flame lifting hot air and nylon toward the sky.  "What are you doing?"

When he looked back at Gabriel, she was frowning.  "The goddesses found you."

He shrugged.  "One of them."

She held up a hand, and he knew she was about to snap before she even curled her fingers.  Later, he wouldn't be able to say what made him so sure, especially since he still didn't think he trusted Gabriel.  But apparently Gabriel's word, once given, was good.

"Wait," he blurted out.  "I asked her to send me."

Gabriel paused, hand still raised.  "Now, why would you ask for something like that?"

"Brigid has a message for you," Sam said quickly.  "Tell me you're sorry for pretending to be Loki and they'll let it go.  That's it.  That's all you have to do, and you can go home."

Gabriel's expression didn't change, but Sam knew he shouldn't have said it.  Any of it, maybe, but that last part in particular.  His brain was lagging significant seconds behind his mouth – not that he had ever known what to say to Gabriel, but it was definitely worse now.  Now that she had accused him of _looking_.

"Tired?" Gabriel said.  Unexpectedly.  Inexplicably.  "They sent your body through this time, didn't they.  Dean-o's gonna be mad."

Sam could only stare, trying not to, trying to think.  "What?" he said at last.

Gabriel rolled her eyes.  The snap, when it came, didn't change anything about his surroundings.  It did make them a lot easier to focus on, though.  And when he tried, he found that he could string together complete thoughts again.

"You could have asked," he said.

Gabriel shrugged.  "I could have," she agreed.  "I could also adopt a baby dinosaur.  I ask you, which of those sounds like more fun?  'Cause I think we both know the answer."

"Am I still tired and I just don't know it?" Sam demanded.  "Did you actually take it away, or did you just give me the angelic version of uppers?"

"Like you have any moral high ground when it comes to drugging yourself within an inch of your life," Gabriel said with a snort.  "Uppers are the least of your worries."

Sam glared.  That wasn't an answer.

"Which is why I would never use them on you," Gabriel continued, smooth and petulant like Sam was ruining a perfectly good trick.  "Really.  Why would you even think that?

"Don't answer that," she added.  "Just enjoy being awake for two seconds.  You're welcome, by the way."

"You like me," Sam said.  Which might have been a mistake, given that he could no longer blame the stupid things he said on the fact that he hadn't slept since – well, since he'd been dead, which might not have been that long ago but it still loomed large in his mind.

Gabriel just looked skeptical.  "Who told you that?"

Sam was happy to take the easy way out.  "One of the goddesses," he said.

"Well," Gabriel said, like she'd already moved on.  "You never can tell with goddesses, can you."

"And you," Sam said, because he couldn't keep his mouth shut.  "You remembered everything the whole time, and you still –"  That was where he ran into trouble.  More trouble.  He gestured at Gabriel, like he could encompass the whole – her – in what he couldn't say.  "You like it when I look."

If Gabriel had taken away his fatigue then something about his judgment must have gone with it.  Castiel had told him, he'd said Gabriel didn't care about people that way.  Humans, at least.  But Sam hadn't seen Gabriel paying much attention to any of the angels, either, and angels were all about togetherness, right?  Maybe he just had a weird way of showing it.

It was Gabriel, Sam thought.  Of course he had a weird way of showing it.

"I like messing with you," Gabriel agreed, and the female form he'd been wearing since the X Mansion gave Sam a bright smile.  "That's what I do, Sammy.  Just trying to get you to expand your horizons."

"You left me presents," Sam said.  "And you never got me back for the flirting thing."

Gabriel snorted, and the basket behind her rocked a little.  "It's a work in progress."

The balloon's lift was tugging at the ropes holding it down, Sam realized.  Why was the flame still lit?  He didn't know anything about hot air balloons, but this one looked pretty full.

"Why does Brigid think you'd follow me if I left?" he asked.

Gabriel's eyes narrowed.  "Are you planning to leave?"

Something kept Sam from saying no.  "I thought you could read my mind in here," he said instead.

Gabriel shrugged, turning away, which Sam took to mean his head was private once again.  For whatever reason.  The burner died, finally, and the silence was almost overwhelming.  "Come or don't come," Gabriel said, loosing one of the ropes with a touch of her hand.  "See if I care."

The basket wobbled as she walked around to the next rope, and Sam watched her pretend to ignore him.  "Cas says you don't," he said.  "Care, I mean.  About us.  About me.  He says you can't."

He heard her snort as the next rope came free.  "I care about you the same way you'd care about a gerbil, Sam.  Cute, occasionally smarter than you'd expect, but at the end of the day not something you can have a conversation with.  Not about the things that matter."

Sam watched the basket list as its moorings fell away.  "Why don't you talk to the other angels, then?"

"Um, have you met them?" Gabriel countered.  She touched the third rope, and it let go like it had never been tied to begin with.  "They're dicks.  And what do they know, anyway?  Nothing.  Can't listen to them be stupid, can't tell them anything without them putting their hands over their ears and humming."

_If I were to design a messenger,_ Brigid had said.  _She'd need two things: a message, and an audience._

No one Gabriel knew was either of those things.  Not anymore.

Sam reached out and caught the edge of the basket, staring up at the balloon and willing the vents at the top to open.  Maybe it worked because this wasn't real.  Maybe he was just that good.  Either way, the basket settled remarkably quickly, the balloon hanging lower as the hot air started to pour out.

Gabriel was glaring at him.  "What'd you do that for?"

"You know," Sam said.  "If you want attention, all you have to do is ask."

Gabriel sneered.  "Try not to be so human," she said, letting the fourth rope go.  The basket didn't move.  "It's embarrassing."

"Try not to be so angelic," he countered.  "It's demeaning."

"Yeah, to you," she retorted.

"You're more than the voice of God," Sam told her.  "You're allowed to have your own opinions."

"I have plenty of opinions," Gabriel snapped.  "I don't know where you've been for the last thousand years – oh wait, I do.  _Nowhere_.  So shut your cakehole.  I don't need a stupid monkey talking down to me."

"I'm not doing it because I have to," Sam said.  "Or because I think I should."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

"It means I want to," he said slowly.  He wasn't sure which of them he was trying to spell it out for more.  "You're not my responsibility, Gabriel.  You're my friend.  And I don't like seeing my friends unhappy."

She rolled her eyes.  "We're not friends!  How many times do I have to tell you!"

"You like me," Sam repeated.  She hadn't denied it yet.

"I'm sure you like gerbils, too," she retorted.  "Sue me, I'm a bleeding heart."

"Is it God?" Sam asked.  "Is it God you want to talk to?  'Cause if you miss your dad, I know what that's like, okay?  Even when you don't get along, family is family –"

"Shut up," Gabriel said fiercely.  "You don't know _anything._"

"That never stopped you," Sam retorted.  "Don't be such a jerk.  It's not like you're special; we've all got issues and we're all spectacularly bad at dealing with them.  Maybe if you stopped wallowing for a few minutes you'd find more people are listening than you think."

"Oh, great," Gabriel sneered.  "Sammy the head shrinker.  Doesn't that just make my century."

Sam stared at her, because what?  Dean said that, Dean had said that more than once – not the century thing, but the head shrinker.  _Sammy the head shrinker._  He couldn't decide if that was a really creepy side effect of angel radio, or if they had both coincidentally come up with exactly the same nickname for him.

"Don't turn me into a bunny," he said at last.  Because he was so going to get smote for this, but barring divine intervention or lightning or her own bad attitude, he was going to do it anyway.

The basket stayed where it was when he let go of the side.  Gabriel stayed where she was when he wrapped his arms around her instead.  And for the first second and a half, all he could think was, _not dead yet._  During the next second the thought _way less angelic than Cas_ flitted through his mind.  And then he was just surprised that he was hugging an archangel, or something that represented an archangel, and it didn't feel any different than hugging anyone else.

Also, "You're really short, you know that?"  It had to be said, not because it made her different than anyone else, but because Gabriel went to so much trouble to cast a long shadow.  Trickster, archangel, demi-god.  False divinity.  Real divinity.  Holier than thou, and don't you forget it, even when that holiness was watching soap operas and chowing down on licorice sticks.

"I'll poke your eyes out with my wings," she muttered.

Her wings were at eye level.  Above his head when he looked down to hug her more tightly, even if she was just standing there.  She wasn't pulling away, though.  That was probably as close to asking for it as Gabriel would ever get.

"Right," Sam said.  "I'll keep that in mind."

**   
Bygones   
**

In retrospect, he probably should have expected the field to change while he wasn't looking.  As it was, though, he didn't notice that the balloon was gone until he heard an unearthly shriek from somewhere above them.  Hopefully far above them.  He flinched anyway.

"Oh, by the way," Gabriel said, still speaking into his shoulder.  "I wasn't kidding about adopting a dinosaur."

Sam let her go.  Gabriel didn't move, and it occurred to him in a sort of distant way that the trickster, this pagan god who wasn't, the archangel of truth, had never made a move to touch anyone.  He'd been touched: Sam had seen it, had seen Michael and even Cas touch Gabriel in passing, and he'd done it himself.  He'd put his hands on the trickster over and over again.  Death threats and flirting aside, he'd even clapped Gabriel on the shoulder a time or two.

He couldn't remember Gabriel so much as acknowledging it unless wings were involved.  And he couldn't remember him ever returning the gesture.  Did archangels not touch people?

Michael didn't count, he decided.

"Should I not do that?" Sam blurted out.  "You didn't smite me."

"You told me not to," Gabriel answered, which seemed weird but at least it was something.

Still, Sam had to point out, "That's never stopped you before."

"I'm thinking a small dinosaur," Gabriel said.  "Something that'll fit through the Roadhouse door.  A little bambiraptor would liven the place up, don't you think?"

"Bambiraptor," Sam repeated.  He wasn't sure he wanted to push it.  "You just made that up."

"Yup," Gabriel agreed cheerfully.  "About a hundred million years ago.  Great invention, really; drove the heterodonts crazy.  Always swooping in from above.  Obnoxious little things."

"I see why you liked them," Sam said.

"Oh, Sammy," Gabriel said with a smirk.  She was already moving off toward the underbrush, chucking like she could call one of them to her.  He could still hear her say over her shoulder, "You ain't seen nothing yet."

He figured that was probably true, but it didn't stop him from looking away.  Looking around, he told himself.  Had they somehow gone back in time?  Or was this just some fake prehistoric fantasy land that Gabriel had conjured?

He didn't actually see any dinosaurs.  He wasn't sure if that was a point for reality or fantasy.

There was another ridiculous shriek from the direction Gabriel had gone, and Sam absolutely did not jump.  For one thing, apparently dinosaurs shrieked a lot.  For another, Gabriel was an _archangel_.  There was no reason to think God's favorite children couldn't hold their own against a (supposedly) small lizard with wings.

"Sam!"

He took off after Gabriel without hesitation.  Stupid overconfident archangels.  Dean was making more and more sense the longer he knew Gabriel.  Seriously, they were _exactly the same._

He burst through the underbrush to find Gabriel flat on her back, a tiny two-legged dinosaur standing on her chest.  Hissing.  Of course.  Sam caught himself before he could bull into them, because the dinosaur looked mean but not exactly... threatening.  What was it going to do, really?  Bite her?  Big deal.

He gulped a breath of air, glaring down at the two of them.  "Oh, for a camera."  Then he realized that he did, supposedly, have his actual body this time.  He patted his pockets down and sure enough, there was his phone.

"Got a leash?" Gabriel asked, even as Sam smirked.

Pulling his blackberry free, he held it up for a picture.  "What," he said, pushing the button.  "For you?"  The picture came out pretty well, considering the weird shadows of ancient trees all around them.  He took another one, just to be sure.

"If you want me on a leash," Gabriel said, "you'll have to collar me first."

Sam rolled his eyes, sliding his hands back into his pockets and sidling closer.  He kept an eye on the dinosaur, who didn't seem to be paying any attention to him at all.  "So your brilliant plan here is... what?  Muzzle?"

Gabriel gave him a look that was far too interested.  "You're going to muzzle me first and then collar me?"

"I'm talking about the dinosaur, Gabriel."  Like she didn't know that.

"You think you're talking about the dinosaur," Gabriel taunted, and Sam stopped where he was and decided to ignore the random reptile for as long as she did.  For all he knew, Gabriel hadn't been calling for help at all.  Maybe she'd just wanted him to admire her awesome hunting skills.

Which he definitely wasn't, for the record.  Archangels who let dinosaurs walk all over them did not count as awesome anything.  Maybe awesome doormats.  If there was such a thing.

"So this is all part of your prank?" Sam said.  "The jokes, the presents, the kidnapping?  The flirting?"

Gabriel shrugged, and the dinosaur swooped its head down in a threatening manner.  She didn't flinch, and the dinosaur didn't connect.  "Your prank involved flirting.  Mine involves pretending to care."

Sam eyed her suspiciously.  "That doesn't make any sense."

"Sure it does," Gabriel said.  "All I have to do is make you feel guilty for playing with me, and presto!  I win."

No, see, that part did make sense.  It was the part where Gabriel was telling him about it that didn't.  Why let Sam in on the joke unless 1) it was over and Gabriel wanted him to admire it, or 2) it was just another lie, designed to cover... who knew what?

"That's not a very good prank," Sam said at last, watching as closely as he could.  Gabriel emoted more through her vessel than most angels, but he figured most of it was fake.  The wings were less likely to lie.  They might be pinned right now, but, as Gabriel would say: hello, archangel.  Sam was pretty sure they still had full range of movement even when it looked like they didn't.

"Aw, Sammy."  Gabriel was pouting, which was kind of hilarious when there was a two-foot tall dinosaur snarling at her every time she so much as blinked.  "You wound me.  All I'm doing is trying to get your attention."

Her wings weren't moving at all.  They didn't even twitch.

Sam squinted, trying to figure out if she was hurt in some way he couldn't see.  "I told you," he said.  "If you want attention, all you have to do is ask for it."

"But Sam," she protested, and she looked seriously absurd with her lower lip trembling and her eyes all wide – still with that snarky, devil-may-care sparkle lurking in the back.  Like she was laughing at him behind her overblown performance of _sad_ and _hurt_.  "All you ever do is get mad at me!"

Those giant wings were frozen against the ground, stiff and tight at her shoulders, and it hit Sam all at once.

"You're not joking," he blurted out.

Gabriel laughed, the pouty look dissolving into smug arrogance as that stuck-up sparkle spilled out of her eyes.  "Oh, Sambo.  I like that you fall for it every time.  Really, very enjoyable.  Thanks for that."

"You're welcome," Sam said, watching her.  "And you're still not joking."

The grin was gone as quickly as it had come, a look of cold disdain flickering in its place.  "Of course I am."

"You're not," Sam said.  "Look, Gabriel.  I wish you weren't a liar and a jerk.  But I still like you, okay?  Maybe you remind me of Dean or something, I dunno.  You act like a freak, but at the end of the day you're one of the good guys.  That means a lot."

"I'm not one of the good guys, Sammy."  Gabriel was staring right through him.  "I'm not your friend."

"You keep saying that," Sam began.

"You might like me," Gabriel continued, like he hadn't spoken.  "But you don't trust me."

That brought him up short.  "No," he agreed after a moment, while the dinosaur shifted from one leg to the other and Gabriel didn't flinch.  "That's true.  But it's not a blanket statement: I don't trust Dean, either.  To not embarrass me, to not be stupid, to keep himself alive.  But I do trust him to have my back.  Like I trust you not to kill me.  Not on purpose."

Gabriel snorted, and the dinosaur put one of its little forelegs – arms, whatever – down on her neck and dug its claws in.  Experimentally, Sam thought.  Gabriel didn't even look at it.  "That's your current definition of good guys?" she demanded.  "Won't kill you on purpose?  I think you need to revisit your standards."

"I don't trust you to understand why I'm tired of being tricked," Sam told her.  "I know you don't get it, that it doesn't mean anything to you.  But I'm a fucking _gerbil_ to you, and you need to stop with the power trips or I honestly can't be around you anymore."

"Everything is a trick to you," Gabriel snapped.  "How am I supposed to guess how much you don't know?  It's like you're deliberately ignorant, and then you have these totally... _unexpected_ moments of clarity.  You just get it, out of nowhere!  It's like you're faking your own stupidity!"

Sam blinked.  Then the dinosaur put its other foot on Gabriel's neck, and that was the last straw.  He shoved it away without moving.  The wounds closed and the blood disappeared even as she sat up, reaching toward the little dinosaur with a – 

There was some kind of dead rat in her hand.  Sam was sure he saw it before the thing disappeared in a flash of teeth, and suddenly Gabriel was the dinosaur's best friend.  Which didn't irritate Sam as much as the appraising look Gabriel was giving him.  "You're getting better at that."

"I suck at it," Sam retorted.  "I can barely move anything."

Gabriel shrugged.  "Price of learning to use your skills without demon superpowers behind them.  The visions will probably come back too.  Eventually."

"I wish they wouldn't," Sam muttered.

"Really?"  Gabriel was standing right next to him, and he glared at her.

"Stay out of it," he said.  The dinosaur was nosing around her knee, and he frowned down at it too.  "Why a dinosaur?"

"Part of an awesome ancient ritual to defend against gods," Gabriel said blithely.  "Amazing what they teach you to look out for when they think you're one of them.  As long as your brother hasn't killed that dragon yet, we should be all set."

Sam didn't know which part of that he should be the most pissed off about, so he settled for, "You're going to kill it?"

"Obviously not," Gabriel scoffed.  "What good is it dead?  And how thorough was Michael in firing me?  Got any idea?"

"Uh... no one asked about you?" Sam guessed.  "At breakfast?"

Gabriel rolled her eyes.  "The wards, Sam.  Will I set them off if I try to change them?"

"Why do you want to change them?" Sam demanded.  "They're fine the way they are."

"They're not fine," Gabriel said, "because they let me in, they let Erzulie in, and they let her take both of us out.  That's not exactly a secure garrison we have there."

"You're an angel," Sam pointed out, "and she's a god.  How are we supposed to keep you out?"

"You're not supposed to keep _me_ out," Gabriel said.  "I'm supposed to keep _her_ out.  And hopefully, a whole host of other things while I'm at it."

"You and the dinosaur," Sam said skeptically.

"And the dragon!"  Gabriel wagged a finger at him.  "The dragon is key.  Let's go."

The land before time was replaced by the Roadhouse – the outside of the Roadhouse – and even Sam could feel the wards react.  How Gabriel had gotten past them the last time he had no idea, but this time they definitely set something off.  There were three angry angels surrounding them before he could open his mouth.

**   
Coming Back   
**

Three angry angels plus Dean, whom he still sometimes forgot to think of as an angel.  And Anna: same thing.  She'd angeled up and he was glad and everything, but it was hard to take her seriously when she was wearing a college sweatshirt.

Samael, on the other hand.

"Okay," Sam said quickly, stepping closer to Gabriel.  "No one do anything weird.  We can explain."

That was when the dinosaur decided to scream at them, and Sam wished one of them had given the muzzle thing more thought.

"Dude," Dean said, eyeing the miniature dinosaur.  "Is that a saurornitholestes?"

"It's a bambiraptor."  Gabriel said it like Dean was being deliberately stupid – which, according to Gabriel, he probably was.

"You say that like it's a real thing."  Dean gave her the exact same tone right back.

"It is a real thing!" Gabriel insisted.  "Scientists named it and everything!  It's not my fault they can't recognize a juvenile when they see one."

"Sam?" Dean asked.

He blinked.  "Uh, I didn't study dinosaurs?"

"Gabriel," Dean said, not looking at her.  Him.  "What's he doing here."

"Helping you," Gabriel said.  "As usual."

"Did I ask you?"  Dean didn't bother to glare, but some weird angel-y thing must have happened because Gabriel visibly flinched.  It didn't slow her down, though.

"Your pronouns weren't very specific," Gabriel retorted.  "How am I supposed to know which of us you're talking to?"

"Take a wild guess," Dean snapped.  "One of you runs this garrison.  The other went rogue, kidnapped my brother, and brought a bunch of goddesses down on a place that's currently harboring two nephilim.  Which one would make me ask 'why the fuck are you here?'"

"Still not conclusive," Gabriel said.  "If Sam hadn't insisted on coming back here, the goddesses wouldn't have followed us."

Dean waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, very "don't talk to me," and it made Anna, Samael, and Sachiel turn and stare at Gabriel.  Cas moved to stand at Dean's shoulder, eyeing Sam curiously.  At least that part was normal.  Sam didn't know when Cas had turned into the weird angel again, but even with most of heaven behind them, Cas stood out.

"Sam," Dean was saying.  "Want to try that again?"

He saw Gabriel open her mouth, but no sound came out.  It made her frown, then roll her eyes at the angels watching her.  Only her eyes moved, though, and Sam was guessing the fact that she didn't fold her arms meant she couldn't.  She didn't rock back on her heels, or shrug, or even resettle her wings as far as he could tell.

He tried not to think that Gabriel was probably as much of a prisoner with them as she had been with... well, everyone else.

"Gabriel says sh-he –"  He didn't manage to make that at all smooth – "knows some kind of ritual to keep the kids safe from the goddesses."  Which wasn't exactly what Gabriel had said, but he was pretty sure that's what they'd been talking about.

"Oh, yeah."  Dean shot Gabriel a disgusted look.  "That's exactly the kind of thing we'd fall for.  If we were stupid."

Gabriel sneered back at him, but apparently she couldn't even move her head.  Someday Sam was going to have to ask what it took to contain an archangel.  Why could they do it when even the goddesses hadn't been able to hold on to her?

"He says if he wanted to kill the kids he would have already done it," Sam blurted out.  Definitely not sure that was the right thing to say, but it was what Gabriel had told him.  And it did seem relevant.  "He doesn't want to be around them –"  Which Sam wasn't totally convinced of, if Gabriel had yanked Maribel into his dream-world – "but he doesn't want them dead, Dean."

"Oh, now you trust him?"  Dean threw him a sideways look.  "When did that happen?"

"I don't –"  Sam stopped.  He could feel Cas looking at him, silent and still strange.  He could feel Gabriel _not_ looking.  "That part makes sense, okay?  He's an archangel.  He could've killed Maribel that time, but he didn't."

"He almost did," Dean snapped.

"But he didn't," Sam repeated carefully.  "He's not afraid of you, Dean.  He's afraid _for _you."

Dean snorted.  Cas turned to look at Gabriel.

"Kids like this tore the world apart last time," Sam said.  "You all still have scars."  He wasn't convinced Gabriel had their best interests at heart either, but Gabriel hadn't joined up because Dean was Michael.  He'd joined because archangels were working together again.  "Don't go to war before there's something to fight over."

Now Gabriel was looking at him.  Still wearing the face the goddesses had given him – or had they?  Sam had his doubts, now.  More doubts than before.  The point was that Gabriel was probably giving him some sort of death glare, and Sam really thought it should stop because, come on.  Like _Gabriel_ was so good at convincing people.

"What kind of ritual?" Dean asked Gabriel suspiciously.

Apparently she could talk now, because Gabriel replied, "The kind gods know and you don't, altar boy.  Take it or leave it, I don't care.  Doesn't help me any."

Dean gave Sam a look like, _Really?  We're doing this again?_

Sam shrugged.  "She says –"  He was trying to keep the feminine pronouns out of his speech, but he was only partly successful.  "The gods have a secret club or something, and they warn each other about rituals like this.  Gabriel says he heard about it when he was pretending to be Loki."

"It helps you," Dean said, glaring at Gabriel.  "It helps you or you wouldn't be offering.  So what do you get out of it?"

"Sam's goodwill," Gabriel said, and Sam rolled his eyes.

"I don't have to throw you in the old hell," Dean said.  "I could just assign you there now.  To the new hell.  I'm sure Lucifer could use some help.  He's a single parent, you know."

"Not if we do this," Gabriel grumbled.  "The ritual anchors me to earth, assuming that's where you want the brats to have safe haven.  You also won't be able to kill me.  Not without breaking the protection and probably a few dozen other wards along with it."

"Why earth?"  Dean still sounded suspicious.

"Just a hunch," Gabriel said, "but I don't think Lucifer's gonna be keen to send his kid to heaven.  And hey, maybe I'm wrong, but you're not exactly shoving yours in the carpool either.  Have they even seen heaven?"

"What's it to you?" Dean retorted, and for the first time in a long time, Sam didn't know what that meant.  _Had_ the kids been to heaven?  He knew Jophiel and Sach stayed on earth on purpose, but he had no idea what Dean was letting Cas do with Maribel.  Even Lucifer had an all-access pass to heaven now; he could be taking Adamel on field trips every day and Sam wouldn't have any idea.

"Idle curiosity," Gabriel said.  "You're gonna want to feed that dinosaur, by the way.  Good at keeping vermin down, but probably needs more than just what this place has lurking about."

"We're not keeping the dinosaur," Dean told her.  "We already have a dragon."

"Yeah," Gabriel agreed, glancing around without moving her head.  Still couldn't, if the way the other angels were looking at her meant anything.  "I need them both for the protection ritual.  Plus you, Lucifer, and probably little brother here."

She was looking at Cas now, and Dean bristled.  Or he might as well have.  His wings shifted, and if he had feathers – which Sach claimed he did, kind of – they were definitely doing some sort of predatory fluffing thing.  "You're not doing anything with Cas.  And I can't order Lucifer to help."

"But you can order Cas not to," Gabriel said.  "That's nice.  That's a healthy relationship.  Well, good seeing you, only not really.  If you don't need me, I'll be off."

"Wait," Castiel said.  It was the first time he'd spoken since Sam had been back, and Sam got the feeling Dean wasn't going to like whatever came out of his mouth.  "I'll help you with the ritual."

Gabriel scoffed.  "No, thank you.  Like I want Michael breathing down my neck."

"You just said you need Michael's help," Cas pointed out.  "I will speak to Lucifer.  What else do you need?"

"Ideally," Gabriel said, glancing first at Sachiel and then at Dean, "all the kids inside the building at the same time.  I'm sure that won't go over well, though, and I guess I can't blame you for that.  So failing that, as many other angels as you can pack in there."

"Hey, I've got an idea," Dean said.  "Why don't you make it sound_ less_ like a trap, and then we'll talk."

"Would that help?" Gabriel countered.  "If I was more subtle about it, would you suspect me less?  Or would you just assume it was more evidence I was up to something and write the whole thing off?"

"Tell me why you need all the kids," Dean said.

Gabriel just stared at him.  "Would giving you a reason make a difference?"

"No," Castiel answered.  "It's your word or nothing.  And I'll take your word."

"Since when?" Dean demanded.

"Since she came back," Castiel said, and Sam didn't know which was weirder: hearing Cas defend Gabriel again, or hearing Cas call Gabriel "she."  "Gabriel's duty has always been to go out, to go away.  If she's come back, then there's something here we need to hear.  I will not accept that it is the destruction of the children.  Therefore, I will assist her."

"Denial doesn't win you any prizes, Cas."

Sam couldn't resist muttering, "And you would know," under his breath.

Dean glared at him, then said, "Fine.  If you convince Lucifer, we'll talk."

Castiel disappeared.

"He may not need a reason," Dean continued, "but I do.  Why do you want all the kids inside?"

"The more specific the ritual, the stronger it is," Gabriel said.  "Duh.  Put 'em all in the building and at least it knows what it's protecting."

Dean glanced at the other angels, and suddenly Gabriel could move again.  Not that she did, visibly, but her wings flared behind her and no one looked surprised.  So Sam assumed they'd let her go on purpose.

"Hey," Sam said, because he was tired of the standoff.  "Why does Cas call you 'she'?"

"Because we're using English," Gabriel said, like he was being particularly slow, "and in English, the word 'she' denotes a female subject."

"But you're not," Sam pointed out.

"Human?" Gabriel filled in the blank for him.  "No, but English wasn't really designed to accommodate alien pronouns.  I'm just glad you guys got over the whole 'it' thing when it came to angels a while back.  Seemed so impersonal."

"It _was_ impersonal," Dean said.  "That's the whole point.  We're not their _friends_, Gabriel."

Sam stared at him, because wow... was that where Gabriel got it from?

"Uh," Dean added, glancing at Sam.  Which had to be record self-awareness time for Dean foot-in-mouth Winchester.  "I mean.  We're friends now.  Some of us.  We weren't then."

"Some of us," Gabriel repeated.  He and Dean exchanged a look Sam didn't get at all.

"Whatever," Dean said at last.  "You had human friends.  Fine.  I'm sorry they got killed.  Okay?"

"If we go to war over these children," Gabriel said quietly.  Barely more than a whisper, like for once she didn't want the entire world to hear what she was saying.  "I'm not taking heaven's side.  I won't, Michael.  Not again."

"Yeah," Dean said.  He wasn't looking at her.  "I know."

Anna and Samael were suddenly standing a lot closer together.  The displaced air made a faint snapping noise.  Gabriel didn't move, and neither did Sachiel.  Sam got the feeling they were deliberately ignoring each other.  Dean had to be playing the same game, because he was keeping track of all of them without making eye contact with a single one.

Sam didn't think it was just the rules of the game that were beyond him.

**   
Party at the Kids' Table   
**

He would have been more annoyed about being relegated to the Roadhouse with the kids if the entire garrison hadn't been ordered inside with him.  The entire garrison plus Anna and Samael, but not counting Dean and Castiel.  Cas had brought Lucifer back with him.  Sam didn't see them arrive, but a few minutes after the door had closed behind Sachiel there came a careful knock.

Jophiel pressed two fingers to her daughter's head and the little dark-haired girl disappeared.  Sach nodded to Sam, and he opened the door a crack.  Who did they know who couldn't just fly in, after all?

There was no one at eye level.  But when he looked down, he found Jesse staring up at him.  "Hi, Sam," he said.  "Dean said to bring Adamel inside."

"Hey, Jesse," Sam said.  He stepped back to make room for them, watching the little brown-haired boy follow Jesse in without a word.  "Hi... Adamel.  Dean still out there?"

"They're good!" Dean called from outside.  "Tell everyone to stay back from the windows!"

He heard Castiel's voice, then.  "That's not necessary, Dean."

"I'm still pissed at you," Dean replied.  "So don't push it, okay?  Staying back from windows is a good safety precaution.  Makes people feel safer."

"It doesn't make angels feel safer," Castiel said.

"Oh, now you're telling me about angels?" Dean countered.  "Lucifer, does staying back from windows make angels feel safer?"

There was a pause where Sam thought, _Oh, shit._

Then he heard Castiel say, "I hardly see how his opinion is conclusive.  He's been in hell longer than I've been alive."

"Okay," Sam said, pulling the door shut behind Jesse and Adamel.  They didn't need to be part of that cat fight.  "We're gonna pretend they know what they're doing.  Jesse, are you... uh, staying?"

"I told Lucifer I'd stay with Adamel," Jesse answered.  "He doesn't trust you guys."

"He doesn't trust us," Sam repeated.  The implication that he _did _trust Jesse was stranger.  "But he trusts you?"

"I have a trustworthy face," Jesse reminded him.

There wasn't anything he could say to that short of _yeah, but you're the antichrist._  That seemed kind of obvious, and also not really something he wanted to remind the rest of the garrison of.  He thought they were already conflicted enough over Adamel.

Maribel saved him by poking her head out from behind the bar.  "Hi Adamel," she said.  "How's Lucifer?"

Sam caught himself just before he would have smiled.  Dean was teaching her "human manners," which he couldn't do by example since he didn't have any.  So he'd made up a set of basic rules – Sam had helped and therefore had to shoulder some of the responsibility – and Maribel had instantly memorized them.  She'd been putting them to use in every interaction since, and Sam was starting to understand why parents wanted their kids to be exposed to other, more positive and possibly more _normal_ role models.

One of the rules had been, _Ask people you know how their relatives are doing._

"He's the king of hell," Adamel replied.

Adamel clearly hadn't been getting any lessons.

Wildfire leaned around the end of the bar next to Maribel.  Sam didn't know where Jophiel had gotten the name "Wildfire" from, and Sachiel wouldn't tell him, but he figured it had to be a nickname.  Cas had named all the kids, and if "Maribel" and "Adamel" were anything to go by, Wildfire's given name was probably some version of "John."

Or, Sam supposed, "Eve."  If he'd been going for unpredictable.

"Hello, Adamel," Wildfire was saying.  She'd been getting her own lessons in humanity, unfortunately filtered through Jophiel, whose grasp of common courtesy was even more limited than Dean's.  Sam was pretty sure one of her rules was, _Greet people._  "Hello, Jesse.  Hello, puppy."

Sam tried not to look around for a hellhound he couldn't see.  Did the thing follow Jesse everywhere?

"His name is Iceman," Jesse told her.

Wildfire obediently corrected herself.  "Hello, Iceman," she said, and Sam wondered how long the "doing exactly what they're told" phase lasted with angel children.  Probably thousands of years.  Maybe only centuries for these kids, if Cas had given them some human influence.  Sam still had no idea what "hybrid" meant in this situation.

"Uh, Jesse," Sam said, as Wildfire's gaze tracked right.  She might as well have been watching nothing.  "Does Gabriel know there's a hellhound in here?"

Jesse shrugged.  "They can all see him."

Okay.  Good point.

"Michael wants everyone to stay back from the windows," Sachiel said.  And like it was some kind of divine command, all of the angels moved toward the center of the room.  The kids mostly stayed where they were, though Adamel was looking around with obvious interest.

"What's so special about the windows?" Jesse wanted to know.  "It's not like seeing their angelic forms would hurt anyone here.  Except maybe Iceman."  He frowned down at a patch of nothing near the bar.  "Maybe we should cover them up."

Every window in the room went dark at the same time.  Lights came on a second later.

There was another knock at the door.

Sam exchanged glances with Sach, and she tilted her head slightly.  "Castiel says it's Claire," she reported after a moment.  "She's dropping off some hand-me-downs for Wildfire and Maribel."

Sam stared at her.  Of everyone in the garrison, excluding Gabriel and occasionally Cas – and Dean, if he counted – she was the most likely to joke with him.  "Now?"

She shrugged.  "Castiel says she has homework later."

Jophiel gave the girls a warning glance, and Sam saw them disappear behind the bar again without a word spoken.  At least, not a word that he could hear.  He also saw Jesse notice, and then step in front of Adamel, which would have been cute if he didn't have powers that could take on an archangel.  But he did, so it was just kind of... well.

Better him than Lucifer, Sam figured.  Probably.

When he opened the door, though, it really was Claire.  She had a duffel bag over her shoulder and another one at her feet.  "Hi," she said.  "Castiel said I could come in?"

"Yeah," Sam said quickly.  "Here, let me help you with those."

"No, it's okay," she said.  "I can get them."  She swung the second duffel up over her other shoulder and maneuvered sideways through the door like she knew exactly what she was doing.  Sam leaned out after she'd stepped through, caught Dean's eye, and exchanged a _wtf?_ glance with him while Cas and Gabriel argued.  Dean just shrugged.

Behind him, on the road, Sam saw a car slowing down to make the turn.  It looked vaguely familiar.  Sam almost closed the door, since traffic was the last thing they needed at this point, but the collection of angels standing out in the parking lot had to have given away their presence by now.

His stare made Dean turn, of course.  Or something did.  Maybe Dean's weird angelic senses had known who was in the car before it hit town.  Those were out-of-state plates – 

"Oh, shit."  He said it out loud this time, and the angels definitely heard him.  He was more worried that he suddenly recognized the car.  He had no idea how Lisa Braeden had found them, but "painfully awkward" was the best they could hope for right now.  Bunny rabbits were probably the next best outcome, but he wasn't ruling out localized lightning and police involvement if Dean kept baiting Castiel.

"What's wrong?"  It was Sach at his shoulder now.  "Want me to tell them we're closed?"

"They're not here for the Roadhouse," Sam said.  "Stay here."

He went to step through the door and ran into an invisible wall.  "What the –"

"You'll want to stay inside until the wards are reactivated," Sachiel offered.  "Gabriel's ritual is already in progress.  The archangels will tune its protection to this garrison and its allies."

"Wait," Sam said.  "So we can't leave until they're done?  What about Claire?  And Jesse and Adamel?"

"The ritual should protect them as well," Sachiel said.

"Should?" Sam repeated.

She actually shrugged, which wasn't unusual for Sach but still sometimes took him by surprise when she was being particularly angelic.  "The ritual Gabriel describes is older than I am.  Apparently it's also a closely guarded secret.  I've never encountered it before."

"Great," Sam muttered.  "So we've got his word and not much else."

"We knew that going in," Sachiel reminded him.

Yeah.  He still didn't have to like it.

"Sam!" Dean's voice shouted.  He looked up to see Lisa, her hand on Ben's shoulder, headed his way.  "Incoming," Dean added unnecessarily.

Wow, Sam thought.  They'd managed to keep that conversation down.  Which was kind of hard to imagine, but it had obviously happened.  Sam wasn't sure he wanted to know what Dean had told her – or what Dean had told _Cas_ – but he was probably going to find out.

"Friends," Sachiel said quietly.  "According to Michael."

"Yeah," Sam said under his breath.  "Friends who know nothing about angels and not a lot more about Dean.  Or me."

"I don't know much about you, Sam," Sachiel murmured.  "But you're welcome at my door anytime."

"Yeah, I know, you too," Sam whispered back.  "It's just –"

"Sam."  Lisa didn't sound very happy.  "Just how much of what that Edlund guy writes about you is true?"

"Oh," Sam said, but at least he managed to keep himself from swearing in front of Ben.  "Carver Edlund?  With the Supernatural books, and the..."

"Website," Lisa finished for him.  "Yeah.  Ben did some research, after you guys left.  Guess which book is my least favorite."

"Uh," Sam said.  "I haven't actually... uh, read them."  Like he needed to.  Dean had, and even secondhand it was too much information.

"Come inside," Sachiel said.  It was more of a command than a suggestion, but Lisa just sighed and pushed through in front of Ben.

"Hey, Ben," Sam added belatedly.  "How was baseball season?"

Ben shrugged, eyeing the inside of the Roadhouse like he was comparing it to a picture in his mind.  Which he might be.  "It was all right," he said.

Lisa had stopped again, right inside the door.  Sam managed to pull it shut behind her before she asked, "Why are all these people staring at me?"

_Thanks, Dean,_ Sam thought.  _Thanks a lot for this._

"Well," he said aloud.  If she'd been reading Chuck's stuff, she could potentially know everything, so he figured he'd better skip the sugarcoating.  "They're soldiers, and you're a stranger.  It's kind of what they do."

"All of them?" Lisa asked, her gaze going to the bar.  Adamel was talking to Claire, now.  Wildfire was nowhere to be seen, but Maribel had crept out to join in the conversation.  Jesse was staring at Lisa as hard as any of the adults.

At the same time, Ben asked, "Are they angels?"

Yeah, so.  Pretty much everything.

"No," he told Lisa.  "Not the kids.

"And yes," Sam added, glancing at Ben.  "They're angels."

"All of them?" Lisa repeated, a little more faintly this time.

"Mostly," Sam admitted.  "Uh... how much did Dean tell you?"  He wanted to ask, _how much have you read,_ but it was probably better all around not to bring that up again.

"Not nearly enough," Lisa said.  "Are angels helping you hunt now?  Wait, don't tell me: you have a divine mission.  God is on your side."

"Not as far as we can tell," Sam said.  "No one's been able to find him, except maybe Cas, and he's not talking."

"Oh," Lisa said again.  "Well, that's..."  She shook her head.  "Reassuring, but kind of disturbing at the same time."

"I think that pretty much sums up the situation," Sam agreed.

Before she could answer, though, the door banged open.  No warning, no knock this time, and Sam was lucky no one happened to be blocking that door when Dean decided to kick it in.  "Dude," he said.  "You have _hands_ –"

Dean was carrying Gabriel.  Like, actually carrying her.  Shockingly still form draped across his arms, serious expression his face.  "Sorry, Sam," he said.  "Kind of full at the moment.  Everyone can go now.  If they need to."

"It's done?" Sam blurted out, falling into step beside him as Dean headed for the stairs.  "And, Dean... Gabriel doesn't have a room."

"Yeah, done," Dean said.  "Over.  Finished."  He nudged the firedoor with his foot, which shouldn't have worked but he was Dean, so of course it did.  "And yeah, he doesn't have a room.  But you do."

"That I use!" Sam exclaimed.

"It's only for a couple of hours," Dean said.  "You won't even know he's there."

Somehow, Sam doubted that very much.

**   
So You Know Who You're Getting   
**

If he'd had the chance, he wouldn't have chosen sleeping through the kid chaos that followed as the best way of dealing with the situation.  Partly because he was still in charge of the garrison, and there were things he needed to know about the wards and the crazy secret ritual Gabriel had inflicted on them.  Partly because he actually wanted to talk to Adamel, and Jesse, and even Claire, and he didn't know when he would have another opportunity.

And partly, he had to admit, because he wanted to make sure Dean didn't piss off Cas to the point of angry silences and "taking a break."  He didn't know how it worked with angels, but he knew how it worked with Dean, and if he screwed it up with Cas then they'd all be miserable.

Castiel had been unfathomably patient with Dean as a human.  Sam wasn't sure Dean would get the same pass as an angel.

He wouldn't be finding out right away, though, because he made the mistake of touching Gabriel after Dean dumped her on his bed.  "Dean, come on," he said, reaching out to... something.  Make her more comfortable, or – 

He didn't know, and neither did Dean, because his brother rolled his eyes.  "He's fine," Dean said.  "Let's go."

Sam touched a jacket-covered arm anyway, and just like that, the room was gone.

He was standing on a grassy hillside, a tree at his back and a house right in front of him.  Gabriel, of course, was standing beside him.  "Do you _want_ Dean to kill you?" Sam asked, with a sort of detached curiosity.  He was saving his real indignation for whatever came next.  He didn't have any idea what it was, but he probably wasn't going to like it.

"I'm remarkably uninterested in Dean right now," Gabriel said.  She was staring at the house, and Sam glanced back at it just in case hordes of creepy things were about to come pouring out of the doors or windows or something.  It only sat there, looking house-like.

"But you are interested in me," Sam said.  Because it was the sort of thing that would provoke a response.

"Yeah," Gabriel said.

Okay.  Not the response he'd expected.

"Here's the thing," Gabriel said, when Sam totally failed to reply.  (Like he was taking that bait, come on.)  "Angels aren't really good with linear time.  But we spend enough of it down here, we start to look at the world that way."

Sam frowned at the house.  Gabriel had built a career – or at the very least, a long-standing hobby – on cause and consequences.  What was more linear than punishment?

"Like it has a beginning and an end," Gabriel continued.  "Like there's a past and a future that we can remember and predict."

Oh.  Sam knew this argument.  It had been one of Dean's favorite rants when he was... well, human.  "Like you know what's going to happen," Sam said.

"Yeah," Gabriel repeated, still staring at the house.  "Like we know what's going to happen."

"Look," Sam said, when Gabriel didn't continue.  "I'm not against destiny, or whatever.  I just think that whether we accept it or not comes down to free will.  We have it.  We use it.  And at the end of the day maybe the results are pretty predictable, but it still matters that we got to make the choice."

"This is your choice," Gabriel said.  "To go in or not.  I guess I figured... I dunno.  You can make it better than I can."

"Wait, to go in where?"  Sam glanced around, but it was still just a house.  And kind of a barn-like structure behind it.  And maybe some outbuildings on the other side that he wasn't going to speculate on, but this was the one they were standing in front of.  "To go in the house?  What's in there?"

"Michael's vision," Gabriel said.

Sam thought about counting to ten.  Then he thought about smacking Gabriel upside the head.  Actually, he thought about those things in the opposite order, but he was so used to thinking about hitting Gabriel that it didn't register at first.  "Michael's vision of what?" he asked, as calmly as he could.

"I don't know," Gabriel said, and Sam was seriously going to do something drastic if she didn't cut it out.  "He sees it a lot, though.  Every time he gets too far from being Dean."

She's trying to tell you something, Sam reminded himself.  _He's_ trying to tell you something.  Whatever.  Gabriel really did try to help them, in his own weird way.  "Too far from being Dean," he repeated.  "You mean, like, sometimes Michael takes over or something?"

"Yeah," Gabriel said, then added, "In a really simplistically human way that's entirely inaccurate, yeah.  That's what happens."

Sam did not grit his teeth.  "Okay, so.  When Michael overwhelms him, he sees this.  Does that mean... this is something Michael likes?"

"No," Gabriel said.  "It's something Michael thought he'd like _as Dean._"

Just like that, Sam got it.  Everything about Dean, everything about Dean and Castiel... everything about Dean and him.  Things the other angels didn't care about, things that had meant nothing to Michael for most of his existence.  Things Dean was trying to hold on to.  "He's trying to stay Dean," he said aloud.

"Bingo."  Gabriel sounded more satisfied than Sam would have liked, like he'd been led along a path and was now being congratulated for being able to read the signs.

Still, Gabriel was the one with the answers.  However annoying it was to try to get them.  "So is this a fantasy?" Sam persisted.  "Dean's white picket fence?  His normal apple-pie life?"

Gabriel snorted.  "I hope not.  'Cause if it is he's got a serious case of brother envy and you've taken co-dependence way past the medication stage."

Sam's patience snapped.  "Why am I here, Gabriel."

"He sees you," Gabriel said.  "In the future.  That's what makes him stay Dean."

He froze.  There were so many things that could go wrong, so many things he could screw up that Dean would feel the need to fix.  "Why –"  He swallowed.  "What did I do?"

"What?"  He saw Gabriel's head turn, knew he'd surprised her somehow, but he didn't get it until she said, "Sam, he's not staying to stop you.  He's staying to watch you.  Because he thinks you're awesome or something, which, whatever, no accounting for taste.  Still."

Sam had trouble forming the words.  "To watch me?"

"And your deliriously charming children," Gabriel said, making it sound like a complaint.  "He must have programmed himself before he was born.  To remember.  Or something."

"He remembers my kids?" Sam repeated.

This time, he heard the hesitation for what it was: not Gabriel being cryptic, or purposefully annoying, but maybe genuinely uncertain.  "I don't know," Gabriel said.  "He thinks he does, I guess."

"You don't think it's going to happen," Sam said.

"Geez, Sam, do you have to be so negative?  Whine, whine, whine, all the time.  Do you like being followed by that cloud of doom?  Does it make you feel more at home?"

"Is this your default reaction every time someone asks you something you don't know the answer to?" Sam shot back.  "Go on the attack?  Is it a distraction thing, or does it just remind you that you're superior?  Like, however much you don't know, they don't know more?  I think it's sad you have to stoop to that, honestly.  Just admit you don't know and move on."

Gabriel didn't answer, and finally Sam glanced sideways at him.  Her.  It was easier to forget when he wasn't looking at her.

She was smiling.  Just a little, halfway, maybe.  The same lopsided smile Gabriel wore as a man.

"Sam," she said, "I don't even know why I brought you here.  I've told you I don't know three times.  I'm not trying to cover up what I don't know; I'm trying to cover up what I _do_ know."

Sam tried not to sigh.  "Which is?"

"I've seen how it ends," she said bluntly.  "This isn't it."

"So what is it?" he pressed.  "You said it wasn't a fantasy."

"I said I hoped it wasn't a fantasy," she corrected, then stopped.

It was the awkward pause that clued him in.  "You like my kids," he guessed.  "You like what Dean sees in his weird anti-angel vision.  How do you know what he sees, by the way?  Is that a –"  He waved his hand in the vicinity of his head.  "Thing?"

Gabriel just shrugged.  "Welcome to the family."

Sam huffed out a breath that wasn't disgusted enough to be a snort and wasn't incredulous enough to be a laugh.  He had no idea what he was doing here, but if Gabriel was going to show him what Dean was seeing – for whatever reason – then he might as well know too.  "You said I can go in?"

Gabriel waved one hand at the house.  More of a shooing motion than anything else, Sam thought.  Like she didn't know why he was still standing around asking questions.  Still, when he headed for the porch, he didn't have to look back to know she was following him.

Everything was quiet when he walked up the steps.  He paused in front of the door, looking for a doorbell or a knocker or... something.  The house number was 2334, posted on a metal mailbox adorned with a series of colorful sticker letters that spelled first "hi" and then "bye."  The name "Winchester" was written in gold lettering underneath.

"Oh, for crying out loud."  Gabriel reached past him and twisted the doorknob, throwing the unlocked door open.  "It's your house, Sam.  And it's not real.  Just go in."

Sam gave her a dirty look, but he stepped through the front door.

Like a switch had been flipped, children appeared on the stairs.  One of them had a bubble gun that lit up, and the other had something that shot little foam discs.  He knew what they did because the kids were aiming them at each other while his own voice yelled for them to stop playing on the stairs.  He wasn't anywhere in sight, though, and when he blinked, neither were the kids.

When he glanced into the next room, though, they were at the table.  The girl was older, bent over a textbook with looseleaf paper wedged into it.  The boy was lying on the floor, tiny digital screen held in front of his face.  Writing, texting, playing, Sam couldn't tell.  He didn't hear himself this time, but he did see a photo on the shelf.

Him and Dean, he realized, when he squinted over at it.  It was gone by the time he got close enough to pick it up, but there had been four children in the picture with them.  He hadn't been fast enough to identify them.

"Maia, Maru, Maribel, and Adamel," Gabriel said from behind him, and Sam turned.  She was watching him with an unblinking intensity that he was more used to seeing on Castiel.  "You'd think 'M' was the only letter in the alphabet.  Although in fairness, I think think Maru's name actually starts with 'K.'"

"Maia and Maru?" Sam asked.  "They're the kids?"

"They're the other kids," Gabriel said.  "Why?  Do you like them?"

"They're kids," Sam said uncomfortably.  He tried to find his pockets with his hands.  "Can't not like them.  So is this what Dean thinks my future's gonna be like?"

"I think you're seeing the peaceful parts," Gabriel said.  "He expects more sulking and a lot more shouting.  All around, as far as I can tell.  It's like he thinks you don't have good parenting role models or something."

Sam saw a flash through the window, and he brushed past Gabriel to get a better look.  Too late, he realized he'd just walked through her wings again.  He'd unintentionally created a habit and now it was hard to break.  He opened his mouth to apologize, but it was automatic, a courtesy that he stifled immediately.  He didn't apologize to Gabriel, as a general rule.

There was a tire swing in the yard.  The kids were on it.  Younger than they'd been at the table, and louder, even through the window.  A chicken wandered across the porch, and he thought he saw Dean's car in the driveway.  Just for a second.  There was someone in it, but he didn't get a good look before they were gone.

"One of you is wrong," Sam said, folding his arms without turning away from the window.  "If Dean thinks this is the future, and you don't?  One of you is wrong."

"Or we both are," Gabriel said.  She appeared at his side without covering the intervening distance, and he could see a faint glimmer on the glass where she stood next to him.  "You haven't asked about their mother."

Sam raised an eyebrow at the window.  "Should I?"

"Do you want to know?" Gabriel countered.

"Would you tell me if I did?" Sam asked.  Weirdly, he found himself on the verge of smiling.

"You could find out," Gabriel said.

Sam smirked at her reflection.  "Or I could ask Dean."

"Suit yourself."  She sounded disgruntled, and he didn't think it was his imagination.

The girl – Maia, he guessed – was suddenly bounding up the porch steps in cutoff jeans and a giant t-shirt that said "farmgirl" on it.  There was a wiry dog beside her, white and black and no higher than her knee when it had all four feet on the ground.  They were both gone before they got to the door.

"Are we happy?" Sam asked.

There was an almost unnoticeable pause.  "Who?"

"Us," Sam said, freeing a hand to circle it between himself and the window.  "This.  Dean sees it because it's good, right?  It makes him want to stay on earth?"

"Apparently," Gabriel said.

"You didn't say you don't know," Sam remarked.

"Yes," Gabriel said, and irritation colored the word.  "We're all disgustingly happy, okay?  If this was twenty questions, you would have lost seventeen questions ago."

"Why do you like it?" Sam wanted to know.  "I mean, fine, Dean gave himself some sort of hypnotic suggestion or whatever.  Why do you watch?"

He could feel Gabriel's gaze, probably looking at him like he was the slowest person on earth.  He was careful not to return it.  Because yeah, he kind of got what was going on.  That didn't mean he knew where it came from.

"I just told you," she said.

**   
Light and Dark   
**

"I want to see your time," Sam said.

The sound of little plastic wheels on the floor made him look down.  The little boy – his future son, if this wasn't another one of Gabriel's mind games – was pushing a single Hot Wheels car across the floor.  The little black frame was instantly recognizable.

"I'm not kidding," Sam added, looking up to find Gabriel watching him instead of the kid.  "Your non-linear time.  I want to see what it looks like."

Gabriel snorted.  "Oh, please.  It would make your head explode."

"So dumb it down for me," Sam said.  "You manage to get across the stuff you think is important.  Try doing something I think is important for once."

"You don't even know what you're asking," Gabriel retorted.  "I'm not a pair of glasses; you can't just magically see what I see."

"_Show me_ what I'm asking."  He wasn't going to let this go.  "I know you can."

"I don't know why I'd want to," Gabriel retorted.  "This whole linear thing, it takes a lot of focus.  But you get used to it, you get in the habit, and going back is weird.  It's all-encompassing.  Do you get what it means to have everything happen at once?  It means everything.  All at once.  Forever.  Your monkey brain can't handle it, Sam; just forget it."

"No," Sam said.  "You brought me here.  You're the one flirting with me.  If you can't tell me something about who you are then I'm just a toy.  And I don't know if you were paying attention last year?  But I've been there and done that and I'm not doing it again.  Not even for an angel."

He grimaced, then amended, "Especially not for an angel."

"It's not something," Gabriel said.  That practical ponytail hadn't let a single strand of hair free, which had to be some kind of angel power, and Sam kind of appreciated it.  It made Gabriel look invulnerable, even as a woman.  Invulnerability didn't try to manipulate him.  "It's everything.  Do you have the faintest clue how much everything is to someone like me?"

"You know everything about me," Sam said.

"Well, that's a lot less!" Gabriel exclaimed.

Sam glared at her.  "Not to me."

"It's communion," Gabriel said, like the whole thing was ridiculous.  "Okay?  That's what you have to do.  And trust me, you won't like it."

"I don't care," Sam said.  He didn't like a lot of things, but here they were.  "Make it happen, Gabriel."

Gabriel sighed dramatically, but Sam saw bright wings shake themselves out behind her, like the angel within was preparing to relax.  Or forcing itself to.  And there, he was doing the "it" thing.  The thing Gabriel had said specifically he didn't like, and Sam was doing it just because he was trying not to think of him as "her."

"I don't suppose you could look the way you did before," Sam muttered.  "While you're at it."

"Sorry, Sammy."  She stepped closer to him, and seriously, was she wearing heels?  He would have noticed that, right?  She was right there in his face, and her eyes were stupidly big.  "I only grant one wish a day."

He felt fingers brush against the back of his hand, and he looked down without thinking.  It put their faces even closer together.  For half a second, he had the weirdest feeling she was going to kiss him.  Like that was so rare in the supernatural world.

All Gabriel did was lift his hand and press it against her cheek.  Which Sam would have had time to care about if the way it made the house light up wasn't so amazingly overwhelming.  The walls were bright like sun coming through them, there was a tree through the middle of the table, the porch was falling apart and the kids were everywhere.  He could point to every chicken that had ever walked the hillside, every bird, every other animal that had or would –

He didn't care.  They were here for the kids.  Babies, teenagers in the hayloft, toddlers in a plastic swimming pool.  Grandparents on a bench under the tree, Maia pulling in behind the wheel of a classically restored Impala.  Sam could see the light that ran through them, the same light that burned in the grass, the air, the atoms that were too small to see but he was _looking_ at them.

The kids, he thought.  Who cares about the atoms.  He was looking at the kids, and they were bright enough to be – 

"Are they angels?"

The words came out strange.  Sam could hear them, but he couldn't feel himself saying them.  He got Gabriel's reaction to his voice, though, and it was... it was like hearing someone on the subway talking two cars down.  While they were moving.  And he had his ipod turned up.  Sam stopped trying to see and just listened.

_Grant that we may be taught by the example of thy holy family and may attain its everlasting fellowship, they who live and reign forever.  Benedictus Deus in angelis suis, et in sanctis suis.  And so her soul returns home.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever and ever.  Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende._

Latin was easier than he remembered.  Possibly because he suddenly remembered when Latin began, and he was sure he could hear, if he listened closely enough, what it would eventually become.  It was the underlying conversation that was more difficult, the English, strangely, that was the hardest to latch on to.

"Sam," Gabriel said, and his voice, her voice, was completely normal.  "Let go."

"Of what?"

He heard Maia's voice clearly for the first time, he heard Dean.  He heard Maru – Kumara, that was his name, it was Gabriel who had started calling him "Maru" – and Adamel talking to Lucifer.  He heard Anael, felt Gabriel wake up in the middle of the night as her grace plummeted to Earth.  Gabriel learning to sleep.  Gabriel leaving Michael, Gabriel losing faith, Gabriel alone under the crushing weight of an empty garden.

Gabriel.

Something shifted.  Like closing his eyes, like plunging into silence, he was suddenly standing in front of the window with Gabriel again.  Just Gabriel: no voices, no bright light or glow or memories from ages gone by.  He held as still as he could while he tried to find his balance.  He was sure it was all swirling around him, but the quiet stillness didn't break.

Gabriel was staring at him.  She was holding his hand away from her face, and for just a second glowing wisps of nothing made her look almost normal.  Then it was only a strange and corporeal face looking up at him as she said, "You're not human."

Sam's fingers curled.  He pulled his hand out of hers, taking a step back.  "Yeah," he said.  "Thanks for that.  But since your little angel trick didn't burn me to a crisp, I guess I'm not entirely hellspawn either."

"Oh, get over yourself."  Gabriel was staring like Sam was a particularly fascinating insect.  Which wasn't that different from how Gabriel usually looked at him, and Sam thought that if he ever got a chance at communion with Gabriel again he was going to look for himself.  "This has nothing to do with your demon blood, which if you ask me is overplayed.  Azazel didn't make you special by feeding you demon blood; he fed you demon blood because you _were_ special.  Already.

"Hello!" Gabriel added when Sam grimaced.  "How many demons do you know with premonitions?  Little Rosie with her mind-reading and not a drop of demon blood in her?  That doesn't strike you as strange?  Come on, Sam.  Now would be a good time for one of your unexpected flashes of intelligence.  Or as I like to call it, smart time."

"You're the one who said I wasn't human," Sam said through gritted teeth.

"And you immediately think demon," Gabriel said.  "Typical.  Like this mudball is the only planet in the universe.  You're all so... _devoted_ to it.  It's disgusting."

"Are you saying I'm an alien?"  Sam thought his incredulous laugh was completely justified.  "You do know your pranks won't work on me, right?  You're gonna have to try harder than that."

For answer, Gabriel reached toward his face.

Sam batted the hand away before it could connect, because who knew what that was about.  But Gabriel held up both hands this time.  Out to the sides, empty, and the message was perfectly clear.  Like he believed that.  He leaned away when she reached for him again and she slowed down, but that hand kept coming.  It landed on his neck instead of his forehead, cupping the curve of his shoulder.

This time it wasn't light, but darkness.  A deep and familiar darkness that showed him every shadow, every dimension that wasn't there, the way _through._  A pull he'd always fought – until now, with Gabriel there to push him.  Hard.  Past the shadows, past the knowing.  To the other side.

The hillside was spread out beneath the night sky.  The house was gone.  And when he looked up – 

The sound of a crash made him open his eyes.  Gabriel had slammed into the wall hard enough to make it shudder.  Sam stared as the side of the house fluctuated, smoothing away damage and leaving Gabriel to consider the view from the floor.  "Huh," she said, like Sam throwing her around was an everyday occurrence.  "You realize you've forgotten things I don't even know."

Then she rolled her eyes, back on her feet between one blink and the next.  "What am I saying, of course you don't realize.  You don't even know what you know, let alone what I don't.  You ever think about watching some soaps, maybe starring in your own reality TV show?  It'd be boring as hell compared to your regular life, but it might give the rest of us a break."

When Sam kept staring at her, she shrugged once.  "Just saying."

That was when the kids appeared between them, solid and tangible.  For the first time, Maia's eyes tracked directly to Sam.  Heading straight for him, she threw her arms around his waist and mumbled, "Hi, Sam."

He stared down at her in shock before he remembered to look at Gabriel.  Who had Maru hugging her within an inch of her... well.  She'd probably survive.  But Sam didn't miss the muttered, "Hi Gabriel."

Gabriel, for once, looked exactly as startled as Sam felt.  "I thought they couldn't see us," Sam hissed.  Why he was trying to keep his voice down, he didn't know.  They could either see him or they couldn't, and apparently they could.  He didn't have any reason to think they couldn't hear.

"Uh, yeah," Gabriel said.  "About that."  She paused, watching Sam pat Maia on the shoulder awkwardly.  "I got nothing."

"Except earth," a new voice said.  An unfamiliar female voice.

Sam sighed as the girl hugging him faded away into nothing.  "Look," he said, without bothering to look at whichever goddess was after them now.  "She's not sorry, okay?  She did it out of respect for Loki and his traditions, and, weird as her methods may have been, I think maybe Loki would have approved."

"I think it doesn't really matter now," the goddess replied.

Gabriel had folded her arms when the boy disappeared.  She was staring out the window like she hadn't noticed anyone else was there.  Sam looked out the window too, just in case, but he didn't see anything.  Feigning disinterest, then.  Funny.  Gabriel was usually more obnoxious about it.

"Why not?" Sam asked, finally turning around.

The goddess wore an eight-pointed star.  "The archangel Gabriel is bound to earth now, and will no longer be able to pass as a deity on Mt. Olympus.  The threat we so vehemently opposed has been neutralized."

"The threat to your egos, you mean," Gabriel muttered.

The goddess didn't blink.  "Perhaps," she agreed.  "You may do as you will."

"Great," Gabriel said.  "That's peachy, thanks for your _permission_."

The goddess was already gone, and Sam figured that was a good thing.

**   
Home Fires   
**

This time it was Cas waiting for him when he woke up.  Sam jerked upright, the sharp shock of expectation that he might find Gabriel beside him too much.  Gabriel was messing with him, he'd had it spelled out in terms anyone could understand: it was a joke.  Just a stupid joke.

It wasn't his bed.  He was in the room Dean shared with Cas.  A room that still had two double beds, which didn't make any sense, and Sam stared at Castiel while his brain tried to wrap itself around the most important thing.

"Where's Gabriel?"

_Not_ the most important thing, he told himself, but it was.  Somehow, it was.

"In your room," Castiel said.  "I'll tell Dean you're awake."

"Wait."  The word was out before he could stop it.  Everything he'd seen was trying to fall into place, and so far it had landed in a confusing jumble.  "Can angels have kids?  With humans?  I mean... naturally?"

"I apologize."  Castiel's voice sounded wary, even rehearsed.  "I should have consulted with you before creating Adamel.  I did not understand the significance his physical appearance would have among humans."

Sam blinked.  "What?  No, that's –"  Then he got it.  "Did Dean make you apologize?"

"He made clear to me the nature of the misunderstanding," Castiel said carefully.

"Look, Cas."  Sam didn't even know what to say to that.  "It's not your fault.  It's just culture clash; it happens."

He thought Castiel frowned a little.  "That wasn't what your question referred to, then."

"No."  He took a deep breath.  "Gabriel showed me something.  Something that could have been the future, and there were... kids.  Two kids.  Gabriel said... uh, he kind of implied... that they could be ours.  Mine and his."  He watched Cas closely.  "Is that possible?"

"It seems unlikely," Castiel said.

"Why?"

Castiel returned his gaze steadily.  "You've never shown any sign of physical attraction to Gabriel in the past.  Dean assures me that such a thing is important to you."

"That's not what I – wait, you've talked about this?" Sam demanded.

"We did discuss the plausibility of your prank," Castiel reminded him.

"Oh."  That brought Sam up short, because, right.  They actually had talked about it.  In an entirely innocent context.  He cleared his throat.  "Okay.  Well, I mean... uh, physically.  Biologically.  Is it even possible?"

"Gabriel's reluctance would likely hinge on psychological trauma associated with the concept," Castiel said.  "But biologically, it's not impossible.  Angels, even archangels, do take on human form, and in this form we are capable of procreation."

"Trauma," Sam repeated.  He wasn't sure what it meant that Cas didn't mention Gabriel's lack of attraction to _him_.  Maybe the rest of the issues were so big it wasn't worth bringing up.  "The nephilim war."

Castiel nodded silently.

_You're not joking._  He'd said it, and Gabriel hadn't disagreed.

On the other hand, Gabriel had also compared him to a gerbil, so who knew what that meant.

He heard the door before he found the voice to ask anything else.  "Sam," Dean said, pushing Gabriel into the room with what could have been a friendly shove.  Gabriel's expression made it clear that it hadn't been, but she didn't complain otherwise.  "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, glancing back at Cas.  "What's going on?"

"Little change in plans," Dean said.  "The whole protection spell had some unexpected side effects.  Apparently it's calling people we feel protective of.  Which is weird.  Not to mention inconvenient.  Mostly for them."

"What?"  Sam stared as Dean sat down on the bed next to him.  "Wait, is that why Claire and Ben –"

"And Lisa," Dean agreed.  "And Emily, and Charlie.  And hey, Jenny brought her kids."

"Okay, we just did it," Sam said.  "Right?  I haven't been out of it that long?  How are they getting here so fast?"

"It's not temporally contained," Dean said, and Sam raised his eyebrows.  "Shut up," Dean added, without missing a beat.  "I know stuff, okay?  It's reaching backwards through time.  Lisa decided to come last week.  Emily's been on her way for like a month."

"Why isn't it going forward?" Sam asked, frowning.  "It shouldn't just go in one direction, right?  Unless –"

"They haven't gotten here yet," Dean finished for him.  "Yeah.  We think it is, so who knows how long this keeps up.  The only good thing is that it doesn't seem to expect them to do anything once they get here."

"It's registering them," Gabriel said.  She sounded impatient, like she'd already explained this.  Possibly multiple times.  "They check in, the ritual recognizes them, and the defenses adjust to protect them.  Like it needs anything special for humans.  Except maybe blood magic.  It's just a holdover from the days when people actually kept interesting company."

"No one asked you," Dean snapped.

"Excuse me, but yeah, you did," Gabriel retorted.  "You're welcome.  Can I go now?"

"Sam?"

Dean was watching him stare at Gabriel.  Sam blinked, shaking his head quickly.  "Whatever.  I don't care."  An unfortunately large part of his attention was taking up by trying to picture Gabriel's old form.  He was trying to hold on to the image of a smirking man instead of a snarky woman.

He was mostly failing.

"Well, I do," Dean was saying.  "He's part of the building's protection now, whether we like it or not.  We're effectively stuck with him.  The only question is, do you want to see him."

Sam's gaze swung from Dean to Cas, flickering over Gabriel on the way back.  "What do you mean?"

"If he's back on the garrison roster," Dean said, "you want him at the top, or the bottom?"

Sam made a face, half a second from denying all knowledge of the subject until Castiel said, "You appear to have rethought your distrust of Gabriel.  I believe Dean is asking whether or not you want her reinstated as your partner."

It was right on the tip of his tongue to say he hadn't rethought anything.  But just like last time, that wasn't the question, and he silently thanked Castiel for deciphering it for him.  "What do you want?" he asked, lifting his chin in Gabriel's direction.  "Do you even care?"

He hadn't forgotten that Gabriel hadn't wanted to lead a garrison in the first place.

But Gabriel just snorted.  "Like you could run this place without me."

Sam heard what she didn't say.  _Yes._

"I think we'll manage," Dean was saying.  "Somehow, we'll muddle through."

"Yes," Sam said.  He felt Gabriel's eyes on him, and he repeated, "Yeah.  I want her help."

There was total silence for a couple of seconds.  Then Dean said, "You sure?"

Sam sighed.  "Yes, okay?  I'm sure.  Is Adamel still here?"

"Yeah," Dean said.  "They're all downstairs."

Sam didn't look at Gabriel as he stood up.  "I'm gonna go talk to him."

"Hey," Dean said.  "You sure you're okay?  What happened?"

Sam hesitated, and he knew that if he said this, if he asked this, everything would change.  He'd avoided the question with Gabriel.  He'd threatened to ask Dean, but he hadn't.  Not yet.

If he brought it up now, he wouldn't be able to keep them from telling him.

"You ever see this... vision?" Sam asked, staring at the door.

"Vision?" Dean repeated.  "Sounds more like your thing."

"Of the future," Sam said.  He turned around, because if he was going to do this, he was at least going to face it.  "Of my kids."

Dean frowned, but Sam couldn't stop now.  "You tell me about them sometimes, you know.  When the angel radio gets too loud, or you come back from heaven, or whatever.  You say... you say I have a daughter, Dean.  In AP.  And a son.  You say he likes your stupid music, but he doesn't.  He just likes you.  They both do.  And you tell me about them."

"Yeah?"  Dean was watching him warily, but he didn't look confused.  Or surprised.  "Guess that's one thing I did right."

Sam couldn't make his voice go as loud as it should, but he had to ask.  "They're real?"

Dean just nodded.

"They're mine?" Sam said softly.

"Yeah," Dean said.  His tone was hard to read, but he wasn't lying.  "They're yours."

"Mine and whose," Sam said, because he already knew.  He just needed someone to say it.

He saw Dean glance at Cas.  He saw Cas say _no._  Cas didn't move, didn't shake his head or blink or flinch in any way.  But his thoughts on the matter were perfectly clear.

"Dean," Sam insisted.

"Gabriel," Dean said.  He didn't look at her, just stared at Sam, and finally Sam realized that Dean was trying to read him just as hard as he was trying to read Dean.  "You and Gabriel.  Freaky, right?"

Sam didn't move.  For a second, for a heartbeat, for long enough that he could feel everyone in the room waiting.  Then he turned around and walked out, because there wasn't anything he could say to that.

There wasn't anything he wanted to say to that.

The next time he saw Gabriel, he looked like himself again.  It was only a minute or two – long enough to walk downstairs and still be beaten there by the angel brigade – but the ponytail was gone and the jacket was back.  The chaos in the main room was enough that Sam didn't have time to feel anything but relieved.

"Why is the dinosaur inside?" he asked.  Not because it seemed like the most important question, but because it seemed safe.  Better than, _what are all these people doing here,_ and definitely a step up from, _I don't even want kids and I already have one with the goddamned devil._

"Wild guess," Gabriel said, and even his voice was normal again.  "Someone let it in."

"Is that your dog?"  Dean was surveying the room like the kids didn't bother him at all.  And maybe they didn't: Dean seemed to have some sort of weird and, as far as Sam was concerned, inexplicable affinity for children.  "Stop popping it in and out of existence.  Can't be good for its digestion."

The little black and white dog Gabriel had once taunted him with was barking madly at the dinosaur.  Sam could only stare, because yeah... that was the one Dean was talking about.  It was the same dog he'd seen on the steps of the house with Maia.

"It's not going in and out of existence," Gabriel said.  "It's going through time."  He whistled, sharp and piercing, and the dog's barking stopped.  "Here, boy!"

"Like that's so much better," Dean muttered.

"Daddy," Maribel's voice said, somehow clear even through the noise.

Sam looked down, and sure enough, she'd walked right up to them.  Ignoring Gabriel, paying no attention to the half dozen adults trying to get Dean's attention.  "Jesse says we should have a pony," she said.

"Well, then Jesse can magic you up a pony," Dean told her.  "Outside."

"That's what I said," she agreed, and Sam had to remind himself that she wasn't really four.  Some days she seemed decades older, sometimes years younger.  He'd decided to think of her as a little kid for his own peace of mind, but it didn't work very well.  "He said parents never want you to have horses."

"Huh," Dean said.  "Really?"

Sam rolled his eyes, but before he could say anything Gabriel beat him to it.

"For crying out loud," Gabriel said.  He snapped his fingers, and a little white pony appeared in the small amount of clear space around them.  A little white pony with a horn.

"No," Dean said immediately.  "No unicorns.  That's where I draw the line."

"That's a good pony," Maribel said, like she was comparing it to all the other ponies she had.

Dean sighed, pointed toward the door.  "Outside."

Maribel obediently lifted her hand to the pony's shoulder – or as close to the shoulder as she could reach – and they both disappeared in a flash of wings.  Sam saw at least one other set of small angel wings disappear at the same time, and when he looked he couldn't find Jesse anywhere.  He wondered why it didn't seem to bother Dean that the "pony" had come from Gabriel.

"The dinosaur, too," Dean was saying.  "Ellen has a policy."

"Oh, does she."  Gabriel didn't sound impressed.

"She should," Dean said.  "No prehistoric creatures or farm animals in the Roadhouse."

"Chimera?" Gabriel suggested.

"Kittens," Dean said.  "Kittens are fine.  Anything bigger than your dog gets run by Ellen first."

"What about Bigfoot, here?" Gabriel wanted to know.  "You got tags for him?"

Sam smacked him on the back of the head without thinking.  Or rather, he had thought about it – so often it had become a habit, if only in his mind.  The problem with thinking things too often was that they tended to translate into action.

"Really, Sammy?"  Gabriel's voice was deceptively mild.  "That's your whole comeback?"

Sam felt compelled to remind him, "You just conjured a unicorn."

He seemed to consider this, but no violent retribution was forthcoming.  Sam didn't know who was more surprised when all Gabriel said was, "I suppose that's a point."

**   
Paradise Estate   
**

"So what's going on with you and Gabriel?"

Sam squinted into the sun, wondering how they were supposed to keep track of kids who could appear and disappear at will.  No wonder Dean was so quick to sign off on The List.  The more angels they had watching out for these kids, the better.

He was starting to understand why Lucifer had enlisted Jesse's help.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, when Ellen just stood there next to him.  Waiting for answers he didn't have.

"I mean," Ellen said, "Sachiel told me this morning that he was gone, and Dean was handing out orders like nobody's business.  Now all of a sudden he's back, and everyone acts like he never left.  Including you.  You took a sword for the guy; I guess I expected more of a reaction."

"Yeah," Sam said.  "Well.  I, uh... I thought he was playing us.  For a while.  But I guess the protection ritual kind of... proved me wrong?"

"Oh, he finally passed your initiation test?" Ellen said.  The skepticism in her voice was unmistakable, and Sam figured they probably deserved that.  He probably deserved it.  "A little late to be having doubts now, isn't it?"

"Yeah," he said with a sigh.  "I guess it was."

"Sam."  Ellen put a hand on his shoulder and turned him toward her as surely as an angel could.  "I don't know what heaven's problem with Gabriel is, but he's done nothing but help us since he got here.  There something I should know?"

"No," Sam said.  Then he changed his mind.  "Maybe.  Ellen... how much did Cas tell you about the kids?"

"The angel children that act like really polite teenagers?"  Ellen made a sound that could have been a snort.  "Enough that I know to keep my cell handy when they're around.  Why?"

"Gabriel has kind of a history with them," Sam said.

"He watches them like they're his long lost family," Ellen said.  "Which I thought he'd already found.  I guess families are bigger in heaven."

The way she said it made it sound like a question, but Sam was stuck on the idea that Gabriel might _miss_ children.  "He does?" he said aloud.

Ellen nodded toward the children.  The large and seemingly growing group of children, angel and human alike, supervised by human parents who didn't look entirely comfortable with their angelic counterparts.  Sam figured they'd like it even less if they knew one of those angel guardians was Lucifer, and one of the kids was actually the antichrist.  They were having enough trouble with the completely implausible "pets" roaming around the Roadhouse property.

"He made them a unicorn," Ellen was saying.  "Because Maribel wanted a pony.  Whatever kind of history he has, it's can't be all bad."

"Ellen," Sachiel said, appearing next to them.  "Dean says to tell you the sheriff's on his way."

Sam froze.  Ellen had exactly the opposite reaction.

"Why?" she demanded.  Without waiting for an answer, she added, "Sam, get these people inside.  And I want someone who can control that dragon out here yesterday."

"Apparently people have been reporting unusual animal sightings," Sachiel replied.

"Oh, well, there's a shock," Ellen retorted.

"Wait," Sam said, frowning out at the the group.  Fantasy animals aside, they weren't actually that strange looking.  "Ellen, the books say you have a full house, right?  It should look it.  Let me talk to Jesse.

"Gabriel," he added, because he had no idea what the archangel was doing.  "Come here."  He usually added "please" when he summoned angels from the garrison, but come on.  It was Gabriel.

"Jesse!" he yelled, just as Gabriel appeared beside him.

"Nope," Gabriel said.  "Try again."

"We have law enforcement on the way," Sam told him.  "We need to look normal.  Can you hide the –"  He waved a hand in the general direction of everyone.  "Animals?"

Gabriel frowned.  "Why?"

Jesse was making his way over – no Adamel with him this time, but Lucifer was standing with his arms folded on the far side of the giant kid fest, so Sam figured the boy was safe.  "Because none of them belong here," he told Gabriel.  "This isn't TV land.  We're trying to avoid being associated with anything supernatural, okay?  Just make them invisible or something."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.  "They belong as much as we do, Sammy boy.  And they're not the ones who have the problem."

"No, _we're_ the ones who'll have the problem if the cops see them," Sam said.  "And our problem is gonna be their problem if there's no one to take care of them."

Gabriel snorted.  "What are they gonna arrest you for, possessing a unicorn?"

"What's going on?" Jesse wanted to know.  "Are we in trouble?"

"No," Sam told him.  "The police are coming, but they're not going to find anything weird."

The look Jesse gave him was skeptical, and Sam couldn't blame him.

"The neighbors have been seeing things," Gabriel drawled.  "To be fair, they're things that are actually here, but Sam seems to think it's gonna get us in trouble.  You think the kids can pass a scratch test?"

"Which ones?" Jesse asked.

"Any of them," Sam said.  "All of them."

Jesse tilted his head.  "If they don't talk," he said.  "Sure."

"How much time do we have?" Sam asked Sachiel.

"I don't know," she said.  "The nearest car is three minutes away, but I don't know if it's the sheriff or not."

"I'll talk to the kids," Jesse said.  "Do you want to warn the parents?  'Cause they won't listen to me."

"I'll talk to the parents," Ellen said.  "But only if someone does something about those animals."

"We're on it," Sam promised.

Gabriel looked amused.  "We are?"

"Yes," Sam said firmly.  "You brought them here.  You can deal with them."

"I didn't have anything to do with the dragon," Gabriel said.  "Besides, they look like they're dealing just fine on their own."

"You're going to do something to the sheriff," Sam realized.  "Animal control already has people with gaping holes in their memories, and now you want to mess with the cops?"

Gabriel was staring at him in disbelief.  "How do you travel with Dean all this time and still have such an antique moral compass?"

"Dean listens to me," Sam countered.  "You should try it sometime.  It's been known to get us out of trouble."

"Oh, relax."  Gabriel rolled his eyes.  "They won't see anything they're not expecting to see, okay?  How's that?"

"Depends."  Sam glanced out at the group, from which the dragon had already disappeared.  "What are they expecting to see?"

"You really think I'm gonna be the problem here, don't you."  Gabriel sounded more amused than offended.  "Well, you're probably right.  What do you think, a fantasy stable?"

A giant looming structure suddenly towered over the roadhouse, and Sam stiffened instinctively before he realized where the shadow was coming from.  It could fit a dozen dragons – with room for actual horses below – and Sam really hoped Gabriel wasn't planning for the future.  And that no one who was coming to check on their bizarre animal reports was in sight yet.

"Maybe some turrets," Gabriel mused.  Turrets appeared at regular intervals around the upper level.

"Gabriel," Sam hissed.

"What?"  Gabriel looked completely innocent, which wasn't anything new.  "They need a place to live, Sam.  This is their home too."

Sam opened his mouth before what Gabriel had said caught up with him.  "No one expects this," he said slowly.  Everyone behind the Roadhouse was ignoring the "fantasy stable"... even people who should know better.  "Can anyone else even see it?"

"Well, the animals can," Gabriel said.  "It wouldn't do them much good otherwise."

"Is it really there?" Sam asked.  Given their experience with Gabriel, it seemed like a fair question.

Gabriel scoffed.  "Obviously.  Like I'd make anyone a fake home."

Sam glanced at him, but Gabriel was staring up at the top of the ridiculously overblown "stable."  He'd told Gabriel he should just say things, and Gabriel said he was.  Then Sam went and walked out on him.  He supposed he wasn't setting the best example of open, effective communication.

"It's not freaky," he said.  Because Dean had said it was, and then Sam had left, and he could see how that probably looked now.  Gabriel was vulnerable too, if not in the ways he expected.  "I just don't get it, that's all."

"Oh, something else you don't get," Gabriel said, watching one of the turrets.  The dragon was back, looking smaller than it had ever managed before as it circled lazily over the massive structure.  "I'd add that to the list, but, what do you know, I've run out of room."

Sam huffed out something that was almost a laugh.  "I was going to say, I don't get why you'd want me.  But I don't really get why I'd want you, either."

"You love me and you know it," Gabriel said flippantly.  "I'm awesome."

"You're awful," Sam corrected, but he was still smiling.  "You're the worst ally ever.  Even Cas doesn't like you, and he likes _Chuck._"

"You started the apocalypse," Gabriel said.

Sam's smile faded, but he said, "You didn't stop it."

That made Gabriel shrug, eyes on the dragon as it dove for an opening on the upper level.  "Touché."

The dinosaur seemed to have noticed the dragon's absence – finally – and had started to sidle in the direction of the new and apparently reptile-friendly building.  Sam watched, wondering if the unicorn was going to follow suit on its own.  And if so, whether it would be before or after the authorities arrived.

"Thanks for changing back," Sam muttered at last.

Gabriel rolled his eyes.  "Like I did it for you.  Women get no respect."

"That's not true," Sam said.

"Saying it don't make it so, Sammy.  Now, excuse me, but I have a unicorn to corral."

Sam reached out and caught his arm before he could get more than two steps.  Gabriel paused, looking at the hand on his arm, and then – for the first time in several minutes – directly at Sam.  "Getting pretty grabby there, aren't you?"

"It's not freaky," Sam told him.

Gabriel's gaze didn't waver.  "But you don't get it."

Sam hesitated.  "No," he admitted.  "I don't."

"Let me know when you do," Gabriel said.  He walked away without effort, making it very clear that Sam held him only as long as he allowed it.  Like they all didn't know that.

Like they all weren't watching, he thought, trying not to catch anyone's eye as he looked around.  Whatever the hell was going on, it was obviously going to play out in full view of the garrison.  And, if the protection ritual didn't ease up soon, all their human friends and allies too.

His eye fell on the stable-mansion again – how could it not – and this time he noticed the sign on the road-facing side.  It didn't matter that no one could see it: in large, lavish script, the words _Paradise Estate_ were scrawled above the door.  Sam tried not to smile, but he couldn't help it.

Dean would be able to see it.  Sam didn't doubt that.  Whether Dean would admit recognizing it long enough to complain was a whole other question.

**   
Shake the Glitter off Your Clothes   
**

"Why is there a hayloft?" Sarah asked, staring up into the rafters.

Hands behind his head, Sam watched the dust settle around them in the lengthening evening light.  Gabriel had done this, and like most things Gabriel did, there was really only one answer.  "I honestly have no idea."

"Why is there a barn at all?" she asked, a moment later.

Sam smiled a little, because this was the easiest conversation he'd had all day.  He was pretty sure Dean had set it up somehow.  "Got me," he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her turn toward him and prop herself up on her elbow.  "I'm not so clear on the origin of the dragon," Sarah remarked.

He resisted the urge to say, _you and everyone else._

"Ask Ellen," he said instead.  "She's the one who kept Dean from killing it – it was already here when we arrived."

He could hear her smile in her voice.  "And I thought New Mexico was exciting."

He rolled his head enough that he could look directly at her.  She had a piece of hay stuck in her hair, and a bunch more on her sleeves and shoulders.  It was a surprisingly good look for her.

"This is why so many hunters work alone," he said.  "The more of us you get together in one place, the stranger things get."

"Oh, is that it?"  She grinned down at him, insouciant and somehow undeterred.  By anything.  "I thought it was all about the mystery and the calling.  The enigmatic traveler, always passing through?"

"The open road isn't all it's cracked up to be," Sam said.  "The food's bad, for one thing.  Cell service is sporadic.  And the people..."  He paused, watching her raise her eyebrows in amusement.  "Well, the people are the good part."

"Uh-huh."  She looked torn between agreeing and laughing at him.  "The live ones, or the dead ones?"

"I'm biased toward the live ones," he said.  "Most of the time."

She looked down at the loose hay between them, and he watched the sun catch the edges of her hair.  "I miss Ruby," she admitted, teasing a leaf free from the dried grass.  "I know we didn't know each other for very long, but Tessa snatched her and we barely got a chance to say goodbye."

"Better than you usually get with a reaper," he said.

"Yeah," she said, her hands stilling.  "I know."

"Sorry," he said, reaching out to brush his fingers against hers.  "Hey... I know what you mean.  I miss her too.  And... you're pretty much the only person I can admit that to, you know?"

"You were together," Sarah said.  Not as though it was a question.

"Yeah," he agreed.  "She and Dean... didn't get along."

That made her smile.  "I noticed.  But Dean's not the only person in the world."

"He was," Sam told her.  "For a long time, he was."

She didn't say anything to that, but she didn't pull her hand away, either.  "Is it weird," she asked at last, "him being an angel?"  Then she shook her head, smiling as she lifted her eyes to his.  "I can't even ask without laughing, but I'm pretty sure you've seen weirder things."

He pretended to wince.  "Oh, weirder than Dean being an angel?  I don't know," he said, letting out his breath in a laugh when she giggled.  "I mean, come on.  The closest Dean ever got to heaven was Warrant on the highway with the windows down."

"Surprise," she managed, squeezing his fingers.

He squeezed back, relaxing into the hay again.  It actually was a nice loft: clean and lit up by windows, sills lined with colored globes that looked like they were made for candles.  The glass was dusty, like they'd been there for a while.  There wasn't anything in them, though.  Sam had checked.

He'd also checked for trapdoors, hidden chutes, and pitchforks, all of which could logically be found in a hayloft – which he was sure Gabriel would remind him of if he stumbled over them by accident.  At least, they could logically be found in a _working_ hayloft.  Did unicorns really eat hay?

So far, there hadn't been any unpleasant surprises.  It was just a big, peaceful room, filled with the scent of sun and summer.  Sarah said she'd come looking for him so he didn't miss dessert – she'd brought two pieces of pie, which they'd long since finished – but Sam figured Dean had sent her.  Pie was Dean's solution to everything.  And if he'd made Cas apologize for the Adamel thing, then Cas had probably taken great satisfaction in making Dean apologize for telling Sam about Gabriel.

"Maybe it's not as weird as it could be," he found himself saying.

"Mmm?"  Sarah had rolled onto her back again, and somehow, having her not look at him made it easier to keep talking.

"Dean's always had kind of a self-loathing thing going on," he told the rafters.  "And he really hates angels.  Maybe I should have seen it coming."

He wasn't sure if he was joking or not.

"He hates angels?"  Sarah sounded like she didn't know either.

"They were always telling Cas what to do," Sam said.  He didn't know why he was still talking.  "He couldn't rebel against our dad.  I guess it was easier to get mad at Castiel's."

There was silence for a moment.  Then Sarah said, "Lots of people blame God for things.  I guess not all of them wake up one day and realize he's closer than they thought."

"Or that whatever they're mad about is as much their responsibility as his," he said.  "Seriously, Michael _fell._  And then he's all upset because what he finds down here isn't heaven?  That was the whole point, right?  Suck it up."

There weren't many people who would take that from him right now, and it was kind of a relief to just say it.  Even if he immediately felt guilty.  He'd had an angel watching out for him his whole life, and he'd been mad at _Dean_ for not being nicer to Castiel.  

"Angels aren't allowed to be upset," Sarah said slowly.  "Or at least, it seems like they're not supposed to be.  Maybe the ability to bitch and whine is part of the gift of being human."

She startled a laugh out of him.  "I'm so glad you're here," Sam said, rolling his head to look at her again.  "Seriously.  I'm surrounded by angels, and they've got this whole telepathy thing going on... anything you say to one of them you say to all of them.  It's not cool."

"You're still human," she said with a smile.  She tipped her head to meet his gaze.  "You're allowed to have human friends."

"Are you staying?" he blurted out.  "I know you've got a lot of research to get back to."

"Find me a ghost," she suggested, "and I can stay a little longer."

"Would an eyewitness do?" he asked.

Sarah studied him for a long moment.  "Are you offering to let me pick your brain about the things you've seen?"

"Sounds that way," he said, giving her his most hopeful smile.  "Why, would you stick around for that?"

It was her turn to laugh.  "Sam, I'd stay for less.  This is the most fun I've had since... maybe ever, actually."

"Fun," he repeated, smile widening into a wry grin.  "Interesting way to describe it."

"Well, except for you getting stabbed, of course," she said.  "Welcome back, by the way.  I hear this isn't the first time you've returned from the dead?"

"I'd rather pretend it is," Sam told her.  "Death doesn't seem to mean the same thing to angels, anyway.  I'm not sure they really notice."

"What, us dying?" she said.

"I know, it sounds weird, right?"  What didn't, lately.  "But they can go anywhere we can, body or soul.  Human death isn't like an end for them, it's just a... a change, I guess.  A new address or something."

"Like instead of finding us down here on earth, they find us in heaven?" she suggested.

He tried to shrug without dislodging their hands.  "I guess, yeah.  I've never been, so maybe I wouldn't know."

She must have heard what he didn't say, because she asked, "Do you want to?  See it, I mean?  Before you die?"

"No," he said firmly.  "Earth is confusing enough, thanks."

When he looked sideways at her, he found her still looking back.  "Maybe," he admitted after a moment.  "I guess; I mean, who wouldn't?  It's heaven.  Everyone we've lost, people we never got a chance to know... they're all there."

"Home isn't the people you've lost, Sam," she said softly.  He felt her trace her thumb over the back of his hand and he knew Gabriel wasn't the only one who saw right through him.  "It's the people you find.  The ones you make room for afterwards.  Love and faith are always there, they just take different forms."

He was quiet for a moment, letting the hay poke gently at his shirt while her fingers soothed his skin.  "I miss this," he realized.  "I miss you.  Having serious conversations about things, you know?"

Instead of agreeing, he thought he heard her smile.  "Not as much as you'd miss everything else if you gave it up, I'm sure."

"I don't want to give it up," he admitted.  "I just want... I just wish everyone we've run into more than once wasn't crazy, you know?  It'd be nice to have actual... to know people again.  Normal people.  Sort of normal people, anyway."

Sarah laughed.  "Believe me, I wish the same thing from the other side.  It'd be nice to know more weird people.  So I could talk to them about things without them _thinking_ I'm crazy."

He thought of Gabriel with sudden, startling clarity, and he sighed.  Sitting up, he looked at their clasped hands.  "Gabriel's calling me.  I better go see what he wants."

She twisted so she could keep their hands together as she sat up, then loosened her fingers and let him pull away.  "Is that like the summoning thing?  You can call any of the angels in the garrison, and so can he?"

Sam smiled, reaching out to pull a piece of hay out of her hair.  "It doesn't work as well on humans," he said.  "I don't have to go when he calls me.  But I should; he doesn't do it as a joke.  Usually."

She brushed more hay off of his shoulder.  "I'll get the dishes," she offered.

"Nah, I got 'em."  Sam shook off as much hay as he could, patting himself down as he stood up, and she was following suit.  "Hey, you want to... I dunno, do the whole dinner sometime?"

"Instead of just dessert?"  She grinned at him.  "How 'bout tomorrow?"

"Sounds good," he agreed.

Sarah handed him the dishes as she passed, winking in a way that was more mischievous than mean.  Not that he compared her to Gabriel at all.  Or looked, as they crossed the space between the mostly invisible stable and the Roadhouse, at the group of kids playing soccer in the dirt out back.  Two of them glowed with wings trailing as they ran, but they were both girls and they were both very young-looking.

_Still home,_ he thought, turning back to the Roadhouse.  Still the people he made room for when everything else was gone.


End file.
